by M. K. Wren
Brian seemed to recoil, his pallid features cast with gray.
“But that…that’s impossible! I mean, if she—Where…where did all that stuff come from?”
Conan almost replied, from out of your pocket.
And yet she loved him.
In her own way. In her own autistic way, and to the degree she found it expedient, or was capable of loving any human being.
Bea. B. Bea. B. Bea. B.…
Conan came to his feet and stared distractedly around the cell; the bars seemed to have moved in closer. Then he snatched one of the magazines from the floor, stood a moment longer, still searching, then went to the tray in which Brian’s supper cooled into inedibility.
Brian protested, “Damn it, Conan, what are you—”
But Conan shook his head to quiet him and knelt beside the tray. The beets lapsed in a separate dish in a pool of margarine-filmed juice. The wrong color of red. Not that it mattered.
He turned the magazine to a page that was nearly all print, folded it back on itself, then held it in front of him in his left hand. It was awkward with the cast, but he needed his right hand free. He dipped his index finger into the crimson liquid, then made a vertical line on the page.
Brian was kneeling beside him, silenced in baffled attentiveness; the rain smashed against the dark window.
Conan dipped his finger again and began at the top of the vertical with a horizontal line, moving to the right, then looping back to the vertical, then out and back in a second loop. The letter B stood luridly on the page.
He dipped into the dish again and made a second vertical, then began another horizontal at the top and a little to the left of it, eyes half closed, focused as much on the remembered original as on this facsimile made with a facsimile of blood. He pulled the horizontal line across, then let his finger drag, the line end in a curving smear.
B. T. The initials seemed a palpable weight on the page.
He said, “Eliot Nye stopped here because he either lost consciousness or died at that moment. But he didn’t finish his message, Brian. He didn’t finish it.”
Brian’s face was only inches from his, his breath coming in quick, shallow whispers.
“He didn’t…finish it?”
Conan dipped his finger again, and beginning where he left off, continued the downward curve only hinted at until it met the vertical in a loop, then drew a straight line down and away from the vertical at a 45-degree angle.
The initials still weighted the page, red on white, B. R.
Brian spoke; the sound was a choked moan.
“Beryl Randall.”
Conan nodded. “Yes. Bea.”
Chapter 24
Brian crouched, staring at the initials, his eyes reflecting light like glazed porcelain, his face devoid of expression, drained of life. He might have been a wax figure except for the faint, uncontrollable tremor in the fine muscles under his skin.
“Bea…oh, damn, she…she killed that poor son of a…but why? In the name of God—why?”
Conan dropped the magazine and took a hard grip on both his arms.
“Brian, the important thing is that this is the answer. This is your freedom.”
But Brian neither heard the words nor felt the pressure of his hands.
“She’s been ripping me off, hasn’t she? All these years, she’s been…and that’s why we weren’t showing enough profit to please the IRS…and Nye—he found out, didn’t he? He found out! And that’s why—Ahhuh!”
He surged to his feet, sending Conan sprawling, kicking the tray aside in an eruption of food and rattling plastic. His fists closed on the barred door, wrenching at it as if he meant to break the lock and wrest the door from its steel hinges with his bare hands. The clatter echoed against the concrete walls and wakened Percy Dent to a wail of alarm.
“She put me in here! She did this to me! She—”
Conan knocked one hand away from the bars, flinching at an unexpected stab of pain—he’d used his left hand for the chop—then spun him around and pinned him against the bars.
“Brian, listen to me! You’ve got to hold on just a little longer. Don’t you understand? I’ve got the truth now. That’s the key to this door!”
As if that were a cue, the rattle of a key sounded in the ward door. Brian sagged, eyes closing, then opening to come into lucid focus on Conan’s face.
“Sure. I’m all right now. I’m…all right.”
Conan released him and stepped back to give them both a little breathing room.
“Just give me a chance, Brian. Please. Let me talk to Steve before you do anything or—”
“Damn it, what’s going on back here?”
The guard stalked into the ward, slamming the door behind him, and with remarkable poise, Brian gave him an ingenuous grin and a shrug.
“Nothing, Charlie. I just tripped over that damn stool and fell into my supper. Busted my shin good.” Then raising his voice, “Hey, Perce, everything’s okay. Go on back to sleep.”
Conan watched that performance with narrowed eyes, but it was effective; Charlie relaxed into annoyance, and Percy stopped his anxious wailing and began cursing the disturbance to his sleep in a droning monotone.
The magazine with its carmine letters lay face up on the littered floor. Conan hurriedly picked it up and went to the door.
“Let me out of here, Charlie. I’ve got to talk to Steve Travers. Is he still in Kleber’s office?”
Charlie sorted through his keys, brow furrowed.
“I don’t keep track of who’s in and out up in front. You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Conan waited impatiently while Charlie mumbled and fumbled at the lock. Brian was listlessly surveying the scattered ruins of his supper.
When the lock finally clicked, Charlie said irritably, “Okay, Tally, you just stay back—Hey!”
Conan was suddenly catapulted forward, flinging the door open as he hit it.
He collided with the guard and fell with him in a flailing pile, Charlie protesting with indignant shouts until his impact with the floor knocked the breath out of him. But before Conan could even get past the fact that he’d been pushed from behind, he was dragged to his feet. He clamped his teeth on an angry cry of pain.
“Damn it, Brian, you’ll break my arm!”
His right arm was twisted behind his back, Brian’s hand like a vise on his wrist while his left arm was thrust under Conan’s left and flexed to immobilize him and bring the barrel of a .38 police special to rest against his head just in front of his ear.
Brian eased the strain on his arm with a considerate “Sorry.” Then, “Charlie, don’t try anything!”
Charlie was crouched, blank-eyed and openmouthed, slapping futilely at his empty holster. The ward door crashed open and two officers rushed in only to stumble to an abrupt halt when Brian snapped, “Hold it right there! Get your hands up!”
Conan sighed. He sounded like a TV crime drama script. “Brian, if this isn’t the stupidest—”
“Be quiet, Conan. You can’t talk me out of it. You guys—” This to the gaping policemen at the door. “Start backing out. You, too, Charlie. Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
The quivering tension in Brian’s muscles transmitted itself to Conan’s body. He didn’t argue further, nor object to being made a flesh-and-blood shield. If Brian had made up his mind to escape—and obviously he had—Conan knew he was his only hope of getting out of this building alive. He felt no fear for the gun at his head; Brian would die before he pulled that trigger. The fear was for Kleber and his men. For their guns.
Charlie and the two officers backed cautiously into the hall while Brian and Conan followed in a grim lock step. In the distance, the radio emitted spurts of voices and static.
Conan counted steps, concentrating like a dancer on Brian’s movements, anticipating and co-ordinating his own with them. Perhaps there was something to fear in the gun at his head: if Brian tripped, it might accidentally go off.
> Eighteen steps to the end of the hall, and Brian’s breathing quickened. The radio muttered and stuttered, but the dispatcher was no longer attending it. He was staring dazedly at the strange procession emerging from the hall. So was Earl Kleber and two more of Holliday Beach’s finest, as well as Steve Travers.
Brian faced them with his heart pounding; Conan could feel it. His voice was husky and nearly unrecognizable.
“I’m walking out of here, and don’t try to stop me. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
Kleber was standing near the front door, shoulders hunched, right hand hovering over his holster.
“Tally, you goddamned fool—”
“Get away from that door, Chief!”
Conan caught Steve’s eye, but there was no way to let him know that he considered himself in no real danger; the danger was to Brian. And it was impossible to determine how worried Steve actually was; his face always tended to go tautly blank under stress.
He said quietly, “Okay, Tally, you’re calling the shots,” and began moving back toward the wall, motioning the others to follow suit. “Give him a clear path, boys. Earl, you better open that door.”
He did, then backed away from it, his eyes angrily slitted, never leaving Brian’s face.
Conan braced himself to resume the grotesque, lock-step dance, looking out beyond the door where the light caught on whirling motes of rain against blackness that seemed to have no finite dimensions.
Ten steps. The rain reached them in an astringent spray at the door. And in all that time—and it seemed intolerably long—no one moved, and there was no sound except the remote and unheeded voices from the radio.
Beyond the door, the rain slashed at their faces.
“Where’s your car, Conan?”
“To the left on this side of the street.”
Brian turned, and his next words were directed back into the station.
“Everybody stay right where you are. I’ve still got this gun at his head.”
Everybody stayed, at least as long as Conan had them in view, which was only a few seconds. Brian began the lock step again out into the rain and across the gravel that made for treacherous footing. A tree under the streetlight cast reeling shadows as it whipped in the wind.
Brian released his right arm. “Give me your car keys.”
“Let me go with you, Brian.”
“No way!”
They were only a few steps from the car; the driver’s side was toward them. Conan knew he could probably free himself now, but he didn’t try. When they reached the car, Brian turned with him toward the station, and Conan saw Kleber and his men at the door; saw the flash of light on their guns. Brian still needed his human shield.
“The key,” Brian insisted, shaking him as he might a recalcitrant child.
Conan pulled his key ring out of his pocket and it was immediately plucked from his hand.
“Brian, for God’s sake, take me with you!”
“No. I—I have to…oh, damn, Conan, I’m sorry!”
Sorry for what, Conan wondered, but when the back of his head imploded with pain, he understood. His knees buckled and he sprawled in the gravel, the roar of the Jaguar’s motor searing white-hot in his head.
But Brian hadn’t hit him hard enough.
Strange lights darted behind his eyes as he scrambled to his feet and staggered against the car, his right hand locking on the door handle.
Brian shouted, “Get away, Conan!”
The car reeled forward, wheels spinning mud. From the station, Kleber’s apoplectic bellow echoed Brian’s order.
“Flagg! Damn you, get away from that car!” Then when a shot sounded, “Hold your fire! Flagg!”
The XK-E swerved, gears snarling as Brian reached out the window and tried to push him away, but he refused to surrender his hold, even when the car lurched into the street and began to pick up speed.
Kleber yelled in a frenzy, “Flagg! Get out of the way!”
But Conan stumbled along with the car, clinging stubbornly to the door handle, despite Brian’s frantic pummeling, despite the car’s acceleration.
He held on and kept pace with it, his head pulsing and rattling with the erratic chain-saw spew of the motor, Kleber’s receding shouts, Brian’s curses that sounded almost like sobs. He held on and kept pace until the car was half a block into the murky dark before he lost his grip and the rain-slick metal jerked out of his hand. He ran a few more steps, fighting for balance, and pitched headlong into a muddy pool lined with bruising shards of asphalt, while the XK-E, with a triumphant roar, leaped into the darkness and out of range of the fusillade of shots that exploded from the station.
Conan remained prone in his makeshift foxhole, praying for deliverance from ricochets, until Kleber’s shouted orders ended the volley, then he began pulling himself up out of the mire, spitting out a mouthful of water that tasted foully of exhaust fumes. The rain offered a sluicing shower, but its primary effect was to chill him thoroughly rather than wash away the coating of stinking mud he had acquired.
“Conan? Where are you? Conan!”
Steve was slogging toward him, looking like an animated scarecrow with his suit jacket pulled up over his head against the rain.
“Here, Steve!”
He was on his feet when Steve reached him. Kleber was only a few paces behind, but his anger preceded him.
“Damn it, Flagg, didn’t you hear me? If you’d just got the hell out of the way, we’d’ve had him!”
Steve asked, “Conan, are you all right?”
He was in the process of trying to ascertain that; his eyes didn’t seem to be focusing too well.
“Yes, I think so. No new breaks, anyway, unless he broke my skull.” That and an old break were making themselves known; his left hand ached to the elbow. He turned and started for the station, but Kleber blocked his way.
“Flagg, if I ever find out you and Tally planned this, by God, I—I’ll—” He lapsed into stuttering rage, then got his tongue, if not his temper, under control enough to demand, “Where’s Tally going?”
Conan pushed past him. “How the hell should I know?”
Kleber apparently didn’t have an answer to that. After two gasping snorts, he headed for the station, too, overtaking and passing them in a few strides.
Conan was hardly aware of him.
“Steve, I need your car.”
“You know where Tally’s headed?”
“Maybe.” He balked at lying outright to Steve, but there wasn’t time for explanations. “Will you let me have your car, or do I have to hotwire a police car?”
They had reached the parking area in front of the station, and Steve paused to search his pockets for his keys.
“You’re in enough trouble as it is. Here—the car’s at the side of the building. Hold it!” He grabbed Conan’s arm before he could run out in the path of a police car launching itself toward the street, lights flashing, siren screaming. A second car hurtled after it, then Conan slipped away from him and started across the gravel at a lope.
Steve shouted, “Wait! Where are you going?”
Conan, back over his shoulder said, “Stay here at the station, Steve. I may need to get hold of you fast.”
“Damn it, Conan, where are…” His shoulders slumped, he stood disconsolately, blinking into the rain, and watched yet another car leave the parking lot—his own.
Conan drove the Ford as if it were his Jaguar, covering the two blocks to the highway in seconds, making a careening turn, and rocketing southward out of sight.
Steve pronounced fervently, “Hell,” then turned toward the station. But something in the gravel near the street caught the light and his eye. He detoured to investigate and found a .38 police special.
He said even more fervently, “Damn it to hell,” and ran for the station.
Kleber was standing over the dispatcher giving orders into the mike. Steve heard the red-flag formula, “…armed and dangerous.”
“Earl!” He lean
ed over the counter with the gun. “Hold the armed and dangerous. Here’s Charlie’s gun. Tally dropped it outside.”
Kleber stared at the gun blankly. “Are you sure?”
“How many police specials do you usually have lying around in the parking lot? He’s not armed, and you’d damn well better get that through to your men!”
“What about Flagg’s car? He’s licensed to carry a gun.”
“He doesn’t usually carry his gun in his car.”
“Doesn’t usually? You think that’s going to make some cop’s widow feel any better?” But he did make a concession of sorts when he said into the mike, “Tally may be armed. Repeat. May be armed.”
Steve turned his back and sagged against the counter, scowling at the pool of water accumulating on the floor as the rain drained from his clothes. A minute later Kleber breezed by on his way to the door.
“State patrol’s setting up roadblocks north and south of town,” he said in passing, but at the door he stopped, perhaps realizing he had more to say than distance to say it in. “Me and my men are covering the restaurant, Tally’s apartment, and his girl friend’s apartment. You want to come with me?”
“No. I’m staying here.”
“Suit yourself. Where’s Flagg?”
“He’s gone to look for Tally.”
“Where?”
Steve sighed. “Damn it, would I be standing around here if I knew?”
Chapter 25
The Ford’s speedometer hit sixty when Conan passed the bookshop, and he heard the wail of a siren behind him with a sinking chill. He didn’t have time for a speeding ticket.
But he dutifully slowed and pulled over to the shoulder, sagging with relief when the police car screamed past without pause, every light flashing disaster.
Then he spun out onto the highway, reaching again for a mile a minute, passing Laurel Road with only a glance, although it was the most direct route to his objective. But with the rain it would be a morass of mud, and he had no more time for digging out of a mudhole than for a ticket. He could only hope Brian had made the error of taking the direct route and might even now be extricating the Jaguar from muddy bondage on Laurel Road.
