by David Martin
The other three — Lyon, Claire, and Mary — are fascinated by this, Quinndell kneeling to speak to a gnomish man dressed in an outrageous Western outfit, bandoliers crossing at his chest and an overly large cowboy hat sitting low on his ears.
“Mr. Welby, my name is Dr. Mason Quinndell.”
Randolph has no idea how to address so regal a man.
“You got into that cave somehow, didn’t you?”
“I bewieve so.” Randolph is whispering too.
“And you found those children I left there for God, didn’t you?”
“I bewieve —”
Randolph’s eyes enlarge. He hadn’t recognized the voice because of Quinndell’s whispering but now Randolph knows who this is. The little man brings up his arm, extending his index finger, pointing it right into the doctor’s beautiful face. “Satan.”
Chuckling, Quinndell stands and brushes off his trousers. “Yes, well, better to rule in Hell, and so on and so forth.”
Quinndell orders Carl to bind Claire and John so they can’t get loose, where they won’t be in the way, the deputy assuring him he knows just how to do it, untying Lyon’s hands, making him face one of the uprights, putting his arms around it, then securing his wrists together on the far side of the post. He does the same to Claire at another of the supports.
“All done, Doc.” Carl is again looking toward the back room, Mary and Claire both noticing this and wondering what’s back there that’s making the enormous deputy so nervous.
Lyon, meanwhile, is finally coming down from the effects of the drugs, aware of his pain and smelling his own rancid sweat.
“Here’s the challenge, Carl,” Quinndell whispers. “How can we still make it appear that John and Claire came out here to question Randolph about rumors they heard, Randolph stealing babies and all that, he kills them both, sets his own house on fire, and then commits suicide — how can we create that scenario when he’s carrying in his leg a bullet from your weapon?”
Carl is alternately nodding and shaking his head, his uniform thoroughly sweated through, taking this opportunity to stuff his tiny mouth with chewing tobacco.
“Mary, get my black case.”
“It’s in my purse, out in the car.”
“Fetch!”
When she’s gone, Quinndell leans close to Carl. “You and the fair Mary will be together before the sun rises, that I promise you.”
This embarrasses Carl — but arouses him too.
Mary reenters the shack carrying a black zippered case the size of a paperback. Knowing the routine, she opens the case and prepares a hypodermic.
The doctor takes off his suitcoat and hands it to Mary, rolling up a sleeve and then offering his forearm, Mary finding a vein and administering the drug.
Quinndell puts his head back and sucks in air with a long hiss as Mary hastily puts away the hypodermic, zippers the case shut, and steps back out of the way.
After a moment of rocking unsteadily on his feet, Quinndell slowly rolls his sleeve back down, slips in the cufflink, and turns for Mary to help him on with the suitcoat. The doctor carefully straightens the coat before turning around and whispering more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “Where to start, where to start.”
Carl hasn’t seen this before, startled by Quinndell as he twists back and forth on the balls of his feet, pounding the bottoms of his palms together in a kind of silent applause, becoming increasingly agitated, smoothing his hair with both hands, taking a step in one direction and then the other. “What I need to know,” he whispers, touching his bruised throat, smiling, turning, once again striking his palms together, “what I need to know … is it still dark out, children?”
“Here’s how we involve you in the new scenario,” Quinndell whispers to Carl, the doctor having fun with this, his graceful white hands on Carl’s fat-humped shoulders, standing close enough to the deputy to kiss him. “You came out here to investigate Sheriff Stone’s disappearance. I don’t suppose you’ve run across the wayward sheriff, have you?”
Carl rolls the tobacco in his cheek and says no.
Quinndell puts his fine head way back and grins widely, so intoxicated by the contents of that hypodermic that he can barely contain himself, whispering in delight to the deputy, “You’re out here looking for the sheriff, dogs attack you, you heroically fight them off, advance to the house here, confronted by the evil Mr. Welby, he attacks you. But what weapon does he use?”
The deputy doesn’t know the answer.
“Get a knife from his kitchen.”
Carl eagerly waddles out of the main room, Mary and Claire and Lyon and Randolph watching all of this as an audience would.
“Got a big one here, Doc!” Carl announces upon his return, handing the butcher knife to Quinndell.
“Excellent, excellent.” Quinndell feels the blade. “You can tell a lot about a man by the way he keeps his knives. Sharp, this one. Now Carl!”
“Right here, Doc.”
Holding the butcher knife in his right hand, Quinndell places his left on Carl’s shoulder. “The evil hermit advances on you, you shoot him in the leg, but he makes one last desperate lunge, managing somehow …”
Quinndell pauses, Carl waits. Then the doctor instructs Carl to give his pistol to Mary. Carl does so without hesitation, returning to his former position facing Quinndell, who once again grasps Carl’s right shoulder, the point of that butcher knife close now to the fat man’s neck.
“Close your eyes, Carl.”
He stops chewing the tobacco.
“You trust me, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Then close your eyes.”
“Wait, I gotta spit.”
“Not yet. I want you to close your eyes and see the scene I’m creating, do you have them closed?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve wounded Mr. Welby but he still has this knife, and with one last dying, desperate effort, he manages to strike a mortal blow.”
Mortal? Carl thinks about this a moment before opening his eyes.
Quinndell finds those eyes with his fingers and closes them gently. “Can you see that mortal blow being struck?”
“Well —”
“Like this,” the doctor whispers, plunging the butcher knife into the left side of Carl’s corpulent neck, maintaining his grip on the knife handle and working it violently back and forth as both of Carl’s hands shoot up to grab the knife, fighting Quinndell for the handle, Carl’s eyes opened wide now, the crude features of the deputy’s face contorted more with utter astonishment than pain, staring into Quinndell’s glass eyes. The deputy moves back and tries to speak, making a whooping sound as if beginning a war chant. “The trick,” Quinndell whispers, following Carl, “is to catch the common carotid artery and the jugular vein, get you coming and going, so to speak.” Quinndell’s one hand holds tightly to Carl’s shoulder, the other hand again manipulating the knife as the two men continue stepping across the room, Carl stumbling backward and Quinndell following in some kind of awful dance. “Not an easy procedure on a neck as fat as yours, Carl.” Until an arterial stream arcs from the wound and Quinndell finally releases Carl, the doctor taking out a handkerchief and wiping his hands. “But I could do it blindfolded.”
Carl bumps against the post where Claire is tied, Carl with both hands clamped to his neck, holding them tightly around the blade but not trying to pull it out, unable to speak, pivoting on one foot as blood and tobacco juice vomit from his mouth.
When he drops hard to his knees the entire floor shakes, his bloody hands still trying to stem the flow from his throat, that arterial stream occasionally finding a space between fingers, Carl’s tremendous blood pressure shooting the stream in a ten-foot arc.
He’s gagging and when he opens his mouth what emerges looks like a roiling mass of black and bloody maggots — the plug of chewing tobacco — Carl taking a long time to die, again shaking the floor when he falls treelike on his side, choking and occasionally kicking ou
t with one leg, neither hand having left his throat, the knife still embedded there, the deputy mounting a final pitiful attempt to get to his feet, but he slips in the mess he’s made on the floor and falls forward, right on his face, dying finally with the sound of gargling his own blood.
Although Lyon and Mary and Claire keep watching, transfixed, Randolph has long ago averted his eyes.
CHAPTER 41
Mary quietly sidesteps toward the door.
“Mary?” But because she has moved, Quinndell is whispering her name to an empty space. He does a slow swivel, searching for her, Mary motionless now, having stopped just a few feet from the shack’s open door. “Mary?”
Lyon wonders why she doesn’t simply run away. He and Claire are tied to the posts but Mary is free to go and she’s holding all that firepower — Carl’s heavy pistol in one hand, the little silver thirty-eight in her other — and even if she wasn’t concerned about saving anyone else’s life, she could easily save her own. Claire, however, understands Mary’s hesitancy: to leave now would mean running out on her daughter.
“Oh, Mary,” the doctor sings.
Although she hasn’t pointed either pistol at Quinndell, Mary has her index fingers curled around the triggers.
“I know you’re still here, why are you acting so silly?” Quinndell asks pleasantly, turning slowly until he finally faces Mary, as if some internal guidance system has located her position. “I’m not going to hurt you for goodness sakes. Carl was a cretin. Didn’t follow orders. And eventually he would’ve talked about this, you know he would have. But I trust you.”
Mary makes a small contemptuous sound.
Having at last heard her, the doctor noticeably relaxes. “I do trust you, implicitly. We have a deal, remember?”
Mary is listening.
“I trust you because I know that once you leave here and have invested in a nice little restaurant, have arranged to meet your daughter, become friends with the adoptive parents, take an active role in your daughter’s life —”
“Stop it!”
Quinndell smiles only enough to show the tips of his teeth. “I know that once you start your new life, Mary, you won’t be any threat to me, I’ll never need to contact you in the future. And if I were to hurt you now, how could I possibly get back into town? Carl soiled me, didn’t he?” Quinndell asks, touching the wet bloodstains on his suitcoat. “I have to go home and change. How am I going to do that without you? How would I get to the airport?”
“Let’s go then.”
“Fine. But first we must make it appear that Mr. Welby killed Claire and John too, otherwise the authorities will be looking for us. Give me Carl’s pistol.”
“No.”
“No? Do you see an alternative to what I’ve just outlined? Are you suggesting we leave these people here to talk with the police?”
“I don’t know!”
“Give me the gun. I’ll do it.”
But when the doctor steps toward her, Mary raises the pistols and cocks both hammers.
Quinndell stops.
“Shoot him!” Lyon yells.
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you, Mary?”
“I’ll drive you into town and you can give me the envelope.”
“Ah, the envelope.” He smooths back his hair with both hands, straightens the suitcoat, and lightly touches the bruises on his throat. “I know how much you want the envelope, Mary, but you’re not thinking clearly. We leave these people here and the police will be picking up both of us within twenty-four hours. I disposed of four babies before you came to live with me and this past March you drove me to the cave so I could dispose of the fifth one, you and I are in this very deeply and very much together. Now give me Carl’s pistol.”
“No!”
“Then tell me what your plan is.”
“I don’t have a plan!” Mary just doesn’t want to see anyone else killed. Nor does she want to shoot anyone herself, not even the doctor. Mary just wants to leave.
Quinndell is exasperated. He clears his throat and winces, telling Mary in a raspy whisper, “Is this how you want your daughter to find out who her real mother is, reading about you in some tabloid, baby-killer?”
She lowers the pistols.
Claire warns, “You can’t trust him.”
With an anguished expression, Mary looks from Claire to Lyon and then down at Randolph, who tells her in a quiet voice, “Do what’s wight.”
“Yes, Mary,” Quinndell says, “do what’s right, what’s right for you and …” Here he reaches into the suit jacket’s inside pocket, bringing out an envelope. “And do what’s right for your daughter.” Quinndell opens the envelope’s flap and pulls out some photographs, just enough that Mary can see their edges. “I am told that she is a very beautiful young girl, and my contacts also tell me that although she is only an average student, Bs and Cs, she has an artistic flair. Plays in the school band. Clarinet, I believe. Sews some of her own dresses. Absolutely devoted to animals.”
Mary is weeping and Claire screams at Quinndell, calling him despicable names as Lyon tells Mary, for godssake just shoot Quinndell and then take the envelope for herself. But Mary has never killed anyone and for the moment she is transfixed by the envelope full of photographs of her daughter. What does she look like?
Quinndell whispers on relentlessly. “Knowing that you would in all likelihood be meeting her before the summer was over, I made some inquires last month. Saving the information as a surprise for you when I turned over this envelope. Apparently your daughter’s little cocker spaniel was run over in the spring and her adoptive parents haven’t bought her a new dog yet, waiting I suppose until they think she’s emotionally ready to accept one. I was just thinking — okay, call me a sentimental old fool — but can you imagine meeting your daughter for the first time and there you are, holding a brand-new little puppy. You could be carrying it in a wicker basket, a ribbon around its neck and —”
“Mary!” Lyon shouts.
But Mary falls for it, body and soul, stepping close to Quinndell, putting one of the pistols under her arm, grasping the envelope.
He won’t release it. “The weapons, please.”
In a daze, Mary hands him the thirty-eight first, which Quinndell puts in his suitcoat pocket, then he takes Carl’s pistol in his right hand, still holding the envelope in his left.
“Give it to me,” she begs.
“Of course. That was our deal and I always keep my word.” When he releases the envelope he tells Mary that her daughter’s name is Penelope.
Trembling, Mary folds back the flap and takes out the twelve photographs. The first one is of Quinndell sticking his tongue out.
“Or maybe it’s Heather.”
Not listening to him, Mary turns quickly to the next photograph, showing Quinndell smiling broadly, his blue eyes opened comically wide.
“One of the advantages of never intending to keep your word,” he whispers, taking a step back, “is that you can promise anything.”
In the third photograph Quinndell is holding his rolled hands in front of his eyes like a pair of binoculars. Mary madly flips through the rest of the photographs, all of Quinndell — no little girl, no address, nothing but pictures of Quinndell mugging for the camera.
Still not getting it, not wanting to believe it, she demands, “Where are my pictures?”
“Oh, Mary, I have absolutely no idea what became of the little bastard you spawned.”
And with that he pulls the trigger, a bullet opening a hole precisely between her breasts, Mary lifted slightly off her feet and then dropped to a sitting position on the floor, surrounded by photographs of Mason Quinndell, Mary’s arms forward, hands resting on her legs, palms turned up as if she is meditating briefly before toppling over like a top-heavy toy.
And from the back room of Randolph’s shack, a child cries.
CHAPTER 42
Quinndell is at a loss for words.
With the baby girl wailing at fall volume
, Randolph tries to raise up and is just about to say something when Claire slides her arms down along the post, kneeling so she can catch Randolph’s eye, shaking her head and mouthing no. She looks over at Lyon and gives him the same message.
Quinndell’s face is going through a remarkable series of changes, from surprise to confusion to fear and then finally there is an effort, not entirely successful, to appear casual. “Mr. Welby?”
Randolph has slumped against the rope around his chest, his eyes barely visible under the brim of his cowboy hat.
“Mr. Welby, please answer me. What are you doing with a child here? This is what Carl was trying to tell me, isn’t it? Welby!”
Nothing.
Quinndell eases toward the center post where Randolph is tied, the doctor finding the little man’s leg with the toe of his shoe, nudging him as the baby continues screaming in the back room. “What’s that child doing here?”
Nothing.
Quinndell motions with the gun and kicks harder. “You rescued one of mine, didn’t you?”
Nothing.
“Answer me, goddamn you!” Quinndell shouts as he repeatedly kicks Randolph’s leg.
“Why are you doing that?” Claire asks. “He’s dead.”
“What did you say? I can’t hear you with that fucking crying.
Claire waits a beat and then asks, “What crying?”
Quinndell brings the pistol up and points it in her direction, Claire quickly moving around to the far side of the post she’s tied to. Lyon does the same.
“If either of you know anything about that baby,” Quinndell demands, still shouting to be heard above the crying, hurting his injured throat, “you’d better tell me right now!”
Lyon calls to him. “Quinndell, you murder two people in cold blood and now you hear babies crying, what the hell was in that injection Mary gave you?”
“What? What did you say?” He fires in Lyon’s direction, the bullet hitting a side wall as Lyon crouches to the floor, this second shot causing the child to scream all the louder. “I’ll kill you, then I’ll strangle the little bastard with my own hands.”
