Dark Lie (9781101607084)

by Springer, Nancy;

  * * *

  A moment after the gunshot finished echoing through the dark basement, Sam heard footsteps impending down the hallway toward him. Not welcome footsteps. Not running, the way rescuers would have done. These footfalls drummed out the relentless rhythm of a desperate man.

  Inwardly cursing all handcuffs ever manufactured, Sam blundered toward the door to place his large self between whatever was coming and his wife. He couldn’t fight with steel bracelets binding his wrists, but maybe he could stop a bullet or two.

  Juliet, he saw as he scuttled past, had seized the knife again as she huddled over Dorrie. But that eight-inch blade wasn’t going to do her much good against a gun—

  A hard hand slammed the door aside, sofa and all. Hard-faced, the gunman strode in, pistol at the ready.

  Sam exclaimed, “Bert!”

  But the old man showed no sign of hearing. He didn’t even seem to see Sam, although for a moment—Sam’s heart stopped—Bert’s gun barrel’s single black-hole eye stared straight at him. Then it passed on like a tornado, sparing him. Sam swiveled to watch, gawking, as Bert blew past him. He saw Bert cast an expressionless glance at the woman lying unconscious on the floor, the girl cowering over her with knife in hand. Then Bert strode past them, coiled, and hurled his pistol with great force and accuracy through the window. Shattering glass flew like fountain spray. Sam heard shouts and screams from outside.

  Turning his back on the sounds, Bert strode over to Sam, grabbed him by the elbow, and spun him around as if spinning a display stand at the end of a drugstore aisle, as if he were looking for aspirin or something. No, make that handcuffs. It was handcuffs Bert was after. Sam felt Bert jabbing at them none too gently with some kind of key or tool. Then, blessedly, he felt the cuffs snick off him.

  For a moment Sam blinked at his own hands, which had gravitated forward and up in front of his face to greet him like long-lost friends. The next instant, they led him urgently to Dorrie. Folding to the floor beside his wife, Sam gathered her upper body into his lap and his arms, cradling her, hugging her to his chest, kissing her lidded eyes, her temple, her forehead. He could barely sense her shallow breathing.

  “Dorrie, it’s Sam. I’m here. Dorrie,” he begged, “don’t leave me.”

  He caught sight of a silvery circular blur. Bert seemed to be amusing himself by spinning the handcuffs. No. Bert wanted something else to throw. Like an aging David facing his final Goliath, Bert whirled the handcuffs and let go, sending them winging through the window amid more shouts and flying glass.

  This time Bert seemed inclined to respond to the shouts. He clawed at his old radio.

  “Walker, you asshole,” he grated in his gravelly voice, “get your fat cowardly backside in here. Or what would do more good, send the medics. Woman and girl need help. Tell the FBI they can put the flash-bang grenades away. Their serial killer is lying dead with his throat cut.”

  Sam heard Juliet gasp. Horror, relief, shock, release. But Sam felt no reaction. Hugging Dorrie, whispering to her to stay alive, please live, please stay—hanging on minute by minute, Sam cared about nothing except his wife, his love.

  * * *

  This time I journeyed not in a dark tunnel but in a luminous lake of prismatic light. This time I did not need to struggle, suffer, fight my way toward love; the light was made of love, and I floated in it. The love was made of timelessness, not a swift stream of moments to sweep me along, but a vast pool of eternity in which to drift. Perspective had splayed like my poor lupus-hexed carcass sprawled below on a dingy linoleum floor, and I relaxed without pain in the sunlight near the smashed window, I lazed as if on invisible eiderdown, luxuriating in an unimaginable freedom. Freedom from the strait and narrow progression of seconds, moments, hours. Freedom from lupus. Freedom from myself.

  Outside any context of my life’s minutes ticking away, I saw my bloodied body being cradled in the arms of a man I barely recognized at first: an unshaven man with a harrowed, bruised face. A man in a business suit but wearing no tie, his shirt collar all sweat, his slacks ruined with dirt, his jacket soiled as if he’d been spelunking in it, rumpled as if he’d slept—no, not slept in it. Sam looked as if he hadn’t had any sleep—

  Sam?

  Sam! Here!

  Sam, embracing me in his arms, talking to me—I could see him talking but I could not hear him. Sam, a real man. Sam, a real hero. And Juliet. I could see her kneeling on the other side of my body from Sam, clutching herself, her thin shoulders shaking. Juliet, my daughter. I barely knew her, yet in some atavistic way I loved her more than—

  More than life.

  No romance novel I had ever read, no classic movie I had ever watched, began to explain the bone-strong, marrow-deep way I loved my daughter.

  Far, far more than I had ever loved Blake.

  Although as a girl I had loved him with all my silly heart.

  And he—even as a felon, in some sick, insane sense of the word, Blake had loved me. He had looked like a man, but he had never gotten over being a boy. This I knew because he had handed me the knife.

  I killed him.

  Would hell’s fire someday burn me because I had slashed that man-boy’s throat? Killing, even to save Juliet, was a dreadful thing. And to kill someone who had once been my prince—

  From a presence that floated with me in the lake of light came a gentle reply. Think, rather, that you closed the eyes of a dream long dead.

  Of course I had an entity keeping me company and giving me guidance, but this time it was not a silver swimming blade named Pandora. This time my companion was—all names, no names, it was in the golden light and of the white light. It was the light. Some people might call it angel. Some might call it God.

  I gave what my parents had taught me to give to God: guilt to the hilt in my own heart. He wasn’t my dream man. He was a real person. And I killed him.

  Instantly the presence responded, Think, rather, that you put an end to his misery.

  I didn’t knife him to be merciful.

  Again, reassurance reached me without hesitation. Neither did you do it to be cruel.

  This being was very different from the pitiless God my parents had taught me. This was no He-God, no Jehovah. Neither was this a She-God. But it was utterly a Person conversing with me inside my mind, a stranger residing deep within me like an old, forgotten friend.

  It instructed me, Think why you did what you did.

  That was simple enough. For Juliet.

  I saw her clutching at my hand as the paramedics shoved her away. I saw Sam standing over me, praying, as she stood beside him, watching the ambulance people work on me.

  Sam. I loved him.

  I really loved him. As a real person.

  I loved him so much.

  But would he still be able to love me now that he knew about me? If I returned to my body . . .

  Understand that every ending is a beginning, whispered the white-light presence that accompanied me.

  I understood only that I hovered on the cusp of an enormity.

  * * *

  Sam felt the girl tugging at his sleeve, but he had to keep his eyes on Dorrie, unconscious on the floor. Officious people in white coats intruded, getting in the way; he couldn’t see Dorrie’s face.

  Weeping, the girl demanded, “Who is she?”

  Sam mumbled, “My wife.” He could still see Dorrie’s corduroy skirt. And there was a glimpse of her hair. Good. Good. With his heart in his gaze Sam hung on to her. As long as he could see Dorrie, even only glimpses of her, she couldn’t really leave him.

  The Phillips girl cried, “She’s not just your wife. Who is she?”

  As if Candor Birch White were a comic-book heroine, Sam thought, Super Wife, with a secret identity. Sam had always known there was a mystery, a distance, about Dorrie, but he ha
d never wanted to face it.

  “Um . . .” Sam did not want to be rude, but he wished the Phillips girl would leave him alone. Couldn’t she see Dorrie might die? Couldn’t she see he was trying to pray?

  “Her name is Dorrie White,” someone answered Juliet, “and she is a hero.” Sam recognized the gentle voice, and peripherally glimpsed a familiar caramel-colored face. Sissy Chappell stood with one arm around Juliet, trying to comfort her.

  “She came out of nowhere,” the girl cried. “How did she know my name?”

  “We aren’t sure. But she knew you were in trouble.”

  Juliet turned to Sam. “Mister, how did she know me?”

  Desperately trying to contact the Almighty, Sam didn’t answer. Starting in childhood he had been taught the right way to pray: First you thank God for specific blessings in your life, and then you ask God in a general way to be with you and your loved ones, keeping the moral hygiene up to par, and then you ask God to help with any specific problems on your mind, and then you say that, notwithstanding any of the above, Thy Will Be Done, Amen. Sam knew all this, but he couldn’t do it. All he seemed to be able to pray was Stay with me, Dorrie, stay, please God, please let her stay with me, please don’t let her die. Over and over. Just at the time it mattered the most, he couldn’t format the prayer properly, couldn’t focus, and if he couldn’t even pray right, he certainly couldn’t give this weeping girl his attention. He couldn’t think what she wanted from him. It was hard to understand her words, choked with sobs. Heck, it was hard to understand anything that was happening.

  That officious jerk Walker popped up out of someplace and grabbed the girl by the elbow. “Juliet Phillips? Come with me.”

  “No!” Juliet pulled away from the man.

  As if interpreting for the girl, Sissy Chappell said, “Take it easy, Captain. Wait a couple minutes until we see whether Mrs. White is okay.”

  “I don’t have a couple minutes, miss. I am an officer of the law, and—”

  “And you didn’t save me,” Juliet flared at him. “She saved me.” Heads turned; even Sam turned to look as she shouted at Walker, “She saved my life. A hundred ways, a hundred times. She didn’t leave me and I’m not leaving her.”

  “I’m not in uniform, but I am an officer of the law also, Captain Walker,” said Sissy quietly, “and this girl—”

  Sam stopped paying attention. He wanted Dorrie. What were they doing with her? Through the interstices between white coats, blue uniforms, and gray suits, Sam saw Dorrie seemingly levitate onto the gurney that would take her to the ambulance. He saw the people around her begin to move in unison, like a multilegged insect, toward the door, with their arms waving aloft like feelers, trailing plastic tubes, wires, scary-looking paraphernalia.

  Sam heard Walker say loudly, “Miss Officer of the Law Also, I don’t give a rat’s ass that the kid is from your jurisdiction. She’s in mine now.”

  “Then you had better call my boss, Chief Angstrom, and arrange—”

  “Bull crap! You’re just trying to stall me!”

  And succeeding, Sam thought. But Walker’s tone of voice and the way he was treating Juliet made Sam feel like throwing a punch at him—a thought he could not afford to entertain right now when Dorrie needed all his attention. He followed the medics as they rolled his wife toward the door, but Juliet broke away from both Sissy and Walker to grip his arm, begging, “How did she know I needed her? Why did she save me?”

  Having no answers for her, barely able to speak if he did, Sam took her hand as softly as if it were his own child’s to remove it from his arm. He had to go with Dorrie. Couldn’t let her out of his sight or she might cease to be, leave him, die. He trotted after the gurney rolling out the door.

  Behind him the girl called, “Mister, wait!”

  Sam felt her cry hit him like a smack from God. He had to do something for her. He couldn’t stay with her, had to get on the ambulance with Dorrie, but he grabbed the cell phone from his pocket and turned back just long enough to see Juliet Phillips straining to follow him, Sissy trying to talk to her, Walker’s ungentle grip on her arm restraining her. Sam tossed the phone to her. “Here!”

  She snagged it one-handed. Excellent catch. This girl was no stranger to baseball.

  “Call your parents!” he yelled to her, running to follow the gurney up the steep concrete-block stairs and out of this accursed place.

  EIGHTEEN

  Several hours later, after driving Sam White’s Silverado back from Appletree, Sissy parked it in his driveway and got out.

  Car doors slammed up and down the street, and people with microphones started to run toward her. Goddamn, the news freaks were staking out the Whites’ private home now. And they’d been thicker than ticks in sheep dip at the police station back in Appletree. Dorrie White was going to be a big story.

  So tired that it was not hard to stay silent and flat-faced, Sissy started walking, straight-arming reporters out of her way without even looking at them. After following her for a couple of blocks they gave up, and she continued, her feet dragging, on her way to the nearest bus stop. Once she got home, she would phone the Fulcrum hospital to check on Dorrie White. A medical helicopter had rushed Dorrie White there, to the Fulcrum Trauma Center, the area’s primary emergency medical facility, but the helicopter that had brought Sissy to Appletree hadn’t taken her back home, not when she wasn’t a priority anymore. It had taken Juliet Phillips to reunite with her parents instead.

  So Sissy Chappell had been caught for a while in the bureaucratic chaos that was to be expected after a major crime—she and Sam White. Not allowed on the medevac copter with his wife, Mr. White had been so upset that for once the local police and the feds were of one mind: This man was too distraught to be allowed behind a steering wheel. Sissy had offered to drive the Silverado, and Sam had been persuaded to give her the keys. The FBI had helped Sam duck the news-media crowd, tucked him into their big sedan, and headed for Fulcrum. The Appletree police, or rather Captain Walker, had relieved Bert Roman of duty and detained him on charges of insubordination, withholding evidence, abuse of a corpse, and whatever else they could think of.

  That was pretty much the end of Appletree’s involvement in the Juliet Phillips/Dorrie White case.

  Sometime after Bert’s arrest but before arrangements had been made for Sam White, Sissy had sighed deeply, straightened her shoulders, and phoned Fulcrum PD to speak with Bud Angstrom. She had barely started to tell him she was in Appletree and why before he shouted loud enough to traumatize her eardrum, “I said you’d be fired and you’re fired!”

  It had, of course, been well worth it.

  Just the same, all the long drive home from Appletree, Sissy had worried about being without a job. It had been hard enough to find the first one; would any other police department ever hire her without Angstrom’s recommendation? Or would she end up as a security guard at a shopping mall? Walking out of the housing development where Sam White lived, Sissy was still worrying, and hoping her car had not been towed out of the Fulcrum PD parking lot; when Angstrom was mad, he could get pretty mean.

  Finally she reached a main street, a block down from a bus stop.

  It took the right bus seemingly forever to come. But once on it, heading for home but finding no seats available and barely able to hang on as she stood in the aisle, Sissy knew for sure that nothing was going to keep her from sleeping. Worry could wait until morning.

  In her apartment at last, after her phone call to Fulcrum Hospital (no word on Dorrie, still in surgery), a quick meal of scrambled eggs, and an even quicker shower, Sissy snuggled into bed and almost instantly slept.

  For about an hour and a half.

  Then her phone rang.

  It was déjà vu.

  The phone rang persistently beside Sissy Chappell’s bed. Facedown in her pillow, groping for the sour
ce of the noise, she brought the phone to one ear and mumbled, “’Lo?”

  “Sistine Chappell?”

  Sissy recognized the voice as that of Frank Gerardo and sat up in a panic. “Please, please don’t tell me that Dorrie White died.”

  “No, no, she’s about the same. Still on the operating table. Did I wake you up? Again?”

  “Well, yes, kind of.”

  “Maybe you’d rather we talked another time—”

  “No, right now is fine.” Worry might not keep Sissy from sleeping, but she knew curiosity could. What did Gerardo want?

  He said, “Okay, um, Miss Chappell, Agent Harris has told me you’ve lost your position at the Fulcrum PD due to our interference, and—”

  “How in the world did Agent Harris know?”

  Gerardo gave a quiet chuckle. “Through the grapevine. Several persons besides yourself could hear Angstrom shouting on the phone, Miss Chappell.”

  “Oh.” Duh. Sissy added hastily, “It’s nice of Agent Harris to take an interest.”

  “Agent Harris has a great deal of respect for you and your work.”

  “That’s good to hear,” said Sissy, trying hard to muster some enthusiasm. “Is it possible—I mean, do you think either you or Agent Harris could talk Angstrom into taking me back?”

  “I doubt it. But I’d much rather talk you into coming to work as a consultant for me.”

  Sissy had never woken up so fast, or responded so enthusiastically, in her life. “That would be great! Consulting about handwriting?”

  “Sometimes, I’m sure, but right now I have a specific job of a different nature in mind for you. Go back to sleep and I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay. Yes. Um, thank you. Good-bye.”

  After that, it was pleasantly difficult for Sissy to get back to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning, Monday, Sissy dressed in her favorite chambray shirt, khaki slacks, and Converse high-tops. Heading downtown on foot to the Fulcrum PD to give her shield and sidearm back to Bud Angstrom, she found herself noticing birdsong and a blue sky and the occasional wildflowers that had forced their way through the pavement. Her car, in the parking lot right where it belonged, seemed to twinkle a headlight at her. Breezing into the building where she had worked for less than a year, Sissy found herself smiling at sour faces and shrugging off the sympathies of friendly ones. After cleaning out her desk, she tapped on Chief Angstrom’s office door, determined to be so pleasant she would give him heartburn. She would have done this in any case, but Agent Gerardo’s phone call made it much easier.