WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  She ran from the door, knowing it was locked, that he could not enter from there. She was beneath the landing and in a long hallway that supplied two exits, one to the swimming pool and the community showers there, one to the chest-high brick maze. She swung right, toward the maze, watching every shadow, imagining a figure leaping from cover to take away her life.

  Overhead on the landing above, she heard footsteps. She paused. It couldn't be Mitch, he couldn't have gotten inside yet. She suspected Son had broken in from the back of the house, through the garage. That's where Mitch would have to come from. So the sounds she heard above her had to be the result of Son, creeping through the dark. She wanted to hide. She wanted to flee. She wanted . . . she wished . . . God, how she wished she had never been born.

  ~*~

  It stunned him when Shadow left the hallway. His muscles relaxed and his hands unclenched. He had been seconds away from rushing her.

  He came from the bathroom doorway to follow behind. Then he saw the headlights from a car soaring across the walls, spearing Shadow as she stood bathed in the glow on the landing. The river of light moved on then disappeared. Someone was here. He should have killed the drunk, he shouldn't have waited for Shadow. He should have done it right away, as soon as they reached the mansion. The bastard had called the police and they were already here. He had to get out. If they caught him in the house, she would implicate him in the murders. Wasn't he already doomed now that Charlie could identify him?

  He might pack up his things and leave Houston. Disappear to another state, maybe another country, before they found his whereabouts.

  And leave Mother? Lying in her bed without decent burial? He couldn't do that! He wished he had arranged things more carefully now. He must have been mad to let her death go so long without his attention. What would they think if he left and they found her that way, naked and cold, the crocheted pillows propping her up in the bed? They would think he was a poor excuse for a son. He could never explain to them that he had not wanted to lose her totally from his life, that her presence, even in death, in some way soothed his troubled mind. She had been his touchstone to reality, the rock that steadied him during the mental storms that periodically tossed him about in a sea of confusion. He needed her, but they would never understand that, never.

  When again he looked for Shadow, she was gone. But which way?

  A man stood at the front door, trying the doorknob. Son could not make out his features. He appeared to be alone. Had the police sent only one man? How terribly odd. How stupid of them.

  The man at the door went down the steps again and Son could not see him. He'd try the other entrances now. He'd find the broken door in the garage. That's where he would enter, up the spiral stairs and onto the catwalk.

  Son turned his back on the front of the house and put his hand on the catwalk's railing. He'd wait here. It was better that he wait than to go hunting. Sooner or later both of them, Shadow and the man, would fall into his hands if only he had the patience to wait for them. He hadn't a gun, his only weapon was the bottle of poisoned whiskey still in his pocket, and his own two bare hands. Nevertheless, he was not frightened. He would have surprise on his side.

  His concentration blocked out everything but the catwalk. The soft throbbing in the tender open wound in his shoulder was hardly noticeable. He focused on the sounds in the big empty house. He breathed evenly, regularly, and a calm filled him. No matter how it turned out, he was prepared to deal with it. He had not succeeded this many years by letting panic and fear overcome him. Death held no terror for him. It never had. He had been the instrument of death for too many for it to hold any supernatural power of dread over him.

  He almost sighed in a kind of ecstasy, so sure was he that he would persevere and escape, unharmed, whole, free to plot and kill again.

  ~*~

  Mitchell knew Shadow was in the house. Her car sat in the driveway. Another car was parked in the underground garage. He supposed it belonged to the copycat killer, if Charlene had been telling the truth.

  The only way he could find to enter the house was at a door leading from the garage. He saw the door had been jimmied and broken from its frame. He opened it and stepped forward. Facing him was a staircase that spiraled up into the darkness to the first and second floors of the house. He remembered being on the catwalk with Shadow, looking down at the swimming pool. He placed this stairway at the far end of that catwalk.

  He had his service revolver from its shoulder holster. He knew he should have called for backup. Why he hadn't was something he didn't want to think about too closely right now. He knew his reluctance had to do with protecting Shadow from involvement. But he couldn't do that, not really, not if it was true she had killed those men.

  Yet, Charlene might be wrong. She was, after all, mentally unstable. She might have imagined anything in her fevered state of mind. That Shadow knew something about the murders, he had no doubt, but he could not quite convince himself she had poisoned men. He realized he just didn't want to believe it. If he did, it meant he had made too many mistakes, he had been willingly duped, and perhaps used in a way he couldn't accept. Wasn't it just as likely that there was no “copycat?” That the “copycat” Charlene told him about was the serial killer and he had gotten Shadow mixed up in it in some bizarre fashion? Anything was possible. If he had learned nothing else in his years as a cop, he knew that. The more a thing seemed to be true, the more it must be false.

  He crept up the stairs, cringing at the hollow sound the metal steps made as he stepped on them. Once on the catwalk, he'd be an easy target. How else could he cross to the other side, though? That was the portion of the house where Shadow and Charlene had lived when they were here. For some reason he did not think anyone was hiding in this part of the huge house. They were both over there.

  He must go to them. It was up to him to take the battle to the enemy. He could only hope the killer, who had never before used a gun in any of the murders, did not now have one in his possession. If he did, when Mitch crossed the catwalk, he was dead meat.

  ~*~

  Shadow crouched in the maze and was unable to see overhead to the middle of the two-story space to the catwalk. She heard footsteps there, but was suddenly afraid to look. Someone might see her. As long as she stayed low and out of sight, she was safe from discovery. She looked both ways in the heavy dark, wondering if she could see Son if he came toward her around the sharp turns at either end of the center of the maze where she hid. She held her hand in front of her face and could not see it. She might as well be in a sealed room without window or light source, it was so dark.

  She felt a wetness on her cheeks and reached up to feel the tears there. She didn't know she had been crying. She buried her head in her knees and wrapped her arms around herself. She felt five years old again, hiding from her abusive father, and the screams of her battered mother. She shut out the sounds on the catwalk and tried with all her might to get away from whatever it was making those sounds. If she was not present in spirit and mind, she would not know what was happening.

  She vaguely remembered another time she had done this, and recalled how easy it had been to do. At that time she had escaped seeing her husband and children lying dead on the floor, pieces of their brains and skulls all around, blood splattered in random patterns on the walls, the carpet . . .

  No, she thought, admonishing the memories and sweeping them away into corners where they belonged. She would not remember. Not anything.

  All you had to do was slip off from the real world and leave it behind. When the world was too painful to endure, too threatening to your sanity, you just turned aside from it and embraced the peace and quiet that could be found in the narrow sanctuary of the mind.

  ~*~

  Son held himself rigid in deep shadow next to the wall facing the catwalk. He watched with trepidation as the man came across the walk toward him. He could see there was a gun in the man's hand. He had to be a cop. He might not be in uniform,
but he was a cop nevertheless. Why he had come alone, Son could not fathom, though he was glad.

  The man paused along the way, turning his head, looking over the railing both right and left as he came. Once he looked behind him and, sure he was not being followed, came forward again.

  Come on! Come to me before it's too late.

  The man neared. He reached the end of the walkway, hesitating again before stepping out onto the landing. Son barely breathed. He still could not see the man's face. He could tell that he was larger than he had hoped for. A man taller than Son, broader in the shoulders, in better shape.

  Not that it made any difference. Surprise was the lever that could tip the scales and put the bigger man at a disadvantage. That's what Son counted on. It's what he had always had going for him.

  He pressed his back into the wall and waited, willing the other man to come forward just a bit more. A few steps, that's all, and he could lurch from the darkness of the wall, and be at the man's back, taking him down.

  ~*~

  Samson made it without mishap across the long open length of the catwalk. He could hear nothing moving in the house. There was a vast silence that lay a pall over the rooms, the swimming pool and atrium maze below. Where were they? He fought the urge to call out to Shadow, to find out if she was all right. He must be careful and not make the mistake of firing at phantoms. He might accidentally hit her and he'd never forgive himself.

  He moved stealthily toward the open landing, wondering briefly if they were in Shadow's bedroom with the cast-iron bed. Could they be lovers, rolling and tumbling on the mattress, sharing a sexual abandon he had thought belonged only to him? Oh God, he couldn't bear it if they were. Such an unholy alliance all but made him go crazy on the spot. Jealousy and fury combined to make him open his mouth to call out to her.

  A jolt from behind took him so off-guard that he thought he must be imagining it at first. An arm snaked around his throat and took him backwards onto his heels. Someone chopped at his gun hand and made him drop the weapon to the floor. He reached up instinctively to grip at the arm squeezing the air from his throat. He meant to grip the hand, tear it away, turn and flip the attacker. He meant to make short work of a deadly situation, but he was being wrestled so expertly backward that he found himself on the catwalk again, flung against the rail. His remaining breath was knocked from his lungs as his stomach connected with the iron rail and he was tipping forward, dizzy, disoriented, unknowing of up from down. And then someone grasped his legs and heaved. He went over and down, head over heels, falling, falling, falling.

  Forty

  She didn't know if it was the landing of the body on the concrete floor in front of her or Son's wild piercing shriek of victory, but Shadow came back from her mental retreat to stare in horrified fascination at Mitchell Samson lying before her, not inches away. She went onto her knees and crawled to him, frantic with the thought he might be dead.

  “Mitch, oh, Mitch,” she whispered. She draped herself over him where he lay unmoving on his side. She felt along his chest to his neck, sliding her fingers up his face, feeling his mouth and nose and eyes as if she were blind. He was breathing, though shallowly. His eyes were closed.

  She moved down his body until her face was near his. She felt all over him in the dark, her hands mechanical in the way they searched for protruding broken bones and blood flow. She could not find anything outwardly wrong with him, but he was undeniably hurt after falling so far. She arched her neck and looked up at the catwalk. Son was gone.

  The son of a bitch! He might have killed Mitch. He meant to, she knew that. There was no telling what damage Mitch suffered. Internal hemorrhaging. A concussion. A broken back. Paralyzation. Dear Jesus, it was all her fault.

  “Shadow?”

  She flinched. She hadn't expected him to regain consciousness. His voice was whispery and unsteady. “Are you all right? Where are you hurt?”

  “Leg . . . I can't move it, think I broke it.”

  “I'm sorry for everything,” she said, bending over to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

  “Stay . . . stay away from him. He'll kill you.”

  “No, he won't. I'm not afraid.”

  She stood, uncaring if Son saw her now in the maze's depths. She began walking, taking turns, keeping her eyes on the front of the house where she knew Son waited. She had to get out of here and kill him.

  There was nothing that could stop her now.

  ~*~

  “It's just you and me,” Son called.

  He stood close to the entrance of the concrete passageway that had been built beneath the catwalk. He was in the shadow, but she could see the outline of his body.

  She came from the maze and moved toward him, the gun leveled. She wanted to pull the trigger, but she might miss again. This time she would take no chances. She turned on the flashlight and shined it directly into his face. He squinted and put up a hand against the light. She lowered the beam so it was on the lower half of his face.

  “Yes,” she said, not recognizing her own voice. It sounded rusty and unused, it sounded like someone else speaking through her. “It's you and me, Son. It's time to end it.”

  “We don't have to,” he said. “I still have poison. We could make him drink it, if he's still alive—he's still alive, isn't he? We could pour it down him and take him out together in the boat. When the police arrive, they won't find us. We'll put in to land somewhere south of here.”

  “You think I want him dead? Mitch? I cared about him. Everyone I've ever cared about died, did you know that?”

  He turned his head to the side and put up his hands. “You have a gun. But you don't want to kill me, Shadow. I'm closer to you than the cop ever could be. He'd put you in jail. I'd never do that. He'd turn on you. I wouldn't.”

  “You're not my friend or my partner. What I've done I had reasons to do.” She hated him with such bright malice that, had he been able to see her eyes, he would have run for his life. The cold cunning so useful to her when she murdered the men she had brought to this house was still alive in her heart. She saw Son as nothing more than human excrement, something stinking and vile she must immediately remove from her presence.

  “You are exactly like me,” he said in a high old-womanish voice.

  This change made her stop and consider him. “Who are you? What kind of lunatic are you?”

  His voice changed again to the one he had used on the phone, the one with the light British accent. “I'm no one and everyone. My name is Son, progeny of Mother and a father I never knew.”

  “If you think I'm going to feel sorry for you, forget it. I don't give a goddamn about your life. I don't care what your name is. You're Frank, you're Son, you can hide behind a million names, a million faces, but I know you. You tried to kill Mitch. You'd kill me if I let you.”

  Now his voice changed again and it was one of a child, a lonely sad little child. “I can mimic anyone, isn't that something?” he said. “I'm very gifted. I have great talent.”

  For a long moment she was afraid. She couldn't kill a child. She could not pull the trigger on a small helpless baby. Then she knew it was a trick. And she hated him even more for trying to confuse her. “You're a sick, twisted, heartless bastard. I might be sick. I might be twisted. But I'm not like you, nothing like you. I didn't kill anyone who was innocent.”

  She stepped closer and his hands came down to reach out for her as if to take her gently into the circle of his arms.

  She squeezed the trigger of the gun in her fist and the sound of the shot reverberated from the catwalk overhead, it echoed through the hallways and the floors and the dome of green glass that graced the center section of the mansion.

  Son stood in place, the flashlight full in his face. He had a look of utter shock and disbelief in his eyes. She squeezed the trigger again. A second shot rang out loud as a sonic boom and Son slumped now to the floor, falling to his knees, his face still turned up to her.

  She pulled the trigger again and a
gain, but the hammer clicked against empty cylinders. She did not stop pulling the trigger until Son fell forward, grasping her knees before sliding to the marble floor.

  She stepped back, dropped the gun beside him.

  There was nothing left in this world that she had to do. She had committed all the wrongs and suffered all the wrongs she could stand for one lifetime.

  There was still the motor boat, tied to the pier. It would take her away from the dead man at her feet, away from making any excuses for her actions, away from Mitch who had loved her and who ultimately had been betrayed by that love.

  Forty-One

  In the far distance on the shore she saw lights swarming the Shoreville mansion. As she watched, mesmerized by the twinkling, the house windows glowed, one by one, until all the floors blazed like a fiery multi-faceted diamond.

  She felt nothing, but a small regret that she could not have said goodbye to Charlene. She knew Mitch would look after her and keep her safe, but she would have liked to tell her how much she'd meant to her, how much her friendship had been valued. How much she had truly loved her.

  The waves in the bay were gentle swells that came from out of the open sea. The small outboard motor hummed, pushing the boat away from land, from the lights, the dark and jumbled past.