Something else did, though. And I didn’t like it one bit.
I didn’t have all the pieces, but I had enough to be pretty sure that there’d been at least one more thing Guillermo Garcia had kept from me regarding his niece. All I really wanted to do now was get her and myself out of this crazy mansion and into a spot where I could quietly put the screws to Guillermo and see if my theory held true.
I’d faced tougher odds in the past.
Recalling what Guillermo had said about Carmelita’s well-developed sense of self-preservation, I hesitated to touch her while she was still hooked up to the machine lest I startle her and get a nasty fist to the gut. So instead, I followed the machine’s cord to an outlet and yanked the plug free just in time to turn around and see Beadle, Elsa, Annabelle, and Mrs. Masterson reaching the top of the spiral stairway outside the tower room. More people were behind them, a whole new party just for me. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell that the people behind Beadle and his female devotees were very male and very muscled. Edward Ross was not among them.
I didn’t like the fact that Annabelle was among the people in the doorway because it meant she’d returned to the danger zone that I’d thought she was free of when I left her in the hallway and put an end to the weird echo from the Break O’ Dawn. Now, I had no choice but to train both guns on the intruders, Annabelle among them. I caught her eyes for a second but felt so guilty for pointing the Luger at her that I had to look away. When I did, I caught sight of Carmelita raising hesitant hands to the now silent apparatus on her head.
“Put the guns down, Mr. Strait,” Beadle said. “We don’t need anyone harmed. There’s been enough of that lately. We’re all friends here.”
Carmelita had the earphones off and was pulling the goggles away from her eyes. I ignored Beadle as I watched her eyes, waiting to see them focus on me.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
She gave me a quizzical look, and I could well imagine how confused she must have been. She had started watching the movies on the little machine with one man training a gun on her, and when the show ended abruptly, there was a different gun toting man in the room—the same one she’d picked up in the desert a couple days before—and he was now apparently bent on rescuing her.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Your uncle sent me.”
Reference to Guillermo brought a light to her eyes and must have reminded her of the peril the old man had been in when she’d last seen him. “Is he all right?” she asked.
“A little banged up, but no worse for wear.”
“Mr. Strait!” Beadle said from the doorway. His tone was insistent. He was the kind of guy used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it, and here I was ignoring him. The nerve of some people.
“Sorry, Cosmo,” I said. I had kept my body oriented toward the door while my eyes had been darting between Carmelita and Beadle’s party. Now that I had made a connection with Carmelita and was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to wallop me and race for the door, I gave Beadle my full attention. “The guns don’t go away until the cops get here. Leave me and my friend here alone, and no one gets shot.”
“There’s no need for the police, Mr. Strait. I’m sure whatever the problem is, it’s all just a simple misunderstanding.”
My eyes darted from Beadle to Annabelle—her chest heaving from the jaunt up the stairs and her eyes full of confusion as she looked at me and then at Carmelita. Elsa Schwartz seemed far more composed, appearing to have eyes only for the technology in the room and the prone form of Detective Miller; she well knew what he had just experienced and, I suspected, wanted very much to get her hands on the non-lethal weapon that had incapacitated her earlier that morning.
And then I glanced at Mrs. Masterson. Her expression suggested that I was about as interesting as one of the potted plants in the corner. The knocked-out cop, the guns in my hands, and even the weird metal suitcase with all its apparatus may as well have been invisible, too. No, with all the fascinating things in that room, the widow seemed able to look only at Carmelita. And the look she gave the seated woman was one of icy anger, murderous rage, and a deep sense of shock.
I hate to say it, but I had seen that look on more than one woman’s face in my life, and it had always come at the moment when they recognized their betrayal for what it was. Her stare couldn’t have been more venomous if she’d caught Carmelita in flagrante delicto with her husband, and yet the surprised element that accompanied this cold rage was a bit out of the ordinary. I hadn’t been able to see her face in the other world because of the veil she’d worn, but there had still been that icy anger there; it had come through in her posture and the easy way she’d had the other Jed Strait dispatched in the back of her fancy car.
That look told me a lot more about what had gone on with Carmelita in the days before I’d met her. I still didn’t have it all worked out, but I was getting there.
“There’s been a misunderstanding, all right,” I said. “And it’s the police who need to straighten it out.”
“Dr. Schwartz tells me you took a little journey this morning,” Beadle offered, ignoring what I’d just said. “If you’ll drop this ridiculous charade, I’ll make it worth your while to tell me everything you saw.”
Halfway into the doorway and crowded in close to Uncle Cosmo, Annabelle’s eyes lit up. “You went to the other world?” she asked. “Just like that?”
She sounded angry, frustrated, maybe a little jealous.
“It looks that way,” I said. “Maybe some people have a knack for it.” I shrugged to emphasize the lack of effort I’d put into slipping into the different Los Angeles. To be honest, I hoped at the time that the gesture bothered her immensely. It was a rather cruel twisting of the knife, and maybe one that Annabelle hadn’t deserved. I still feel bad about that.
Beadle must have had a knack of his own—one for disregarding things that didn’t fit in with his way of looking at the world. When he spoke again, it was as though the little exchange between Annabelle and me had never happened. “What do you say, Mr. Strait? Would five thousand dollars convince you to call off the police and come back to Catalina with me?”
“It’s a nice offer,” I said, “but right now I’m only—”
I never got to finish giving Uncle Cosmo the brush off. Just at that moment, Annabelle shouted my name and burst through the doorway, pushing past Beadle and Elsa. With no regard for the Luger I had pointed in her direction, she threw her body against mine. It all happened so fast, so I had only a second to process what I assumed was her motivation: rage at my having succeeded in crossing over to the other world with such ease while she had struggled and failed to follow Uncle Cosmo and the few others among the select who had seen it for themselves. But then I heard the gunshot and felt Annabelle fold in my arms as I tried to regain my balance after her assault.
Even though I knew I hadn’t squeezed the Luger’s trigger, part of me was convinced that I had, the prophecy from the Break O’ Dawn having come true. And in that moment, I felt a part of myself die at the way I’d betrayed both Annabelle and myself. A bit of my life drained right out of me. I felt paler, lighter, less there, and for a second I feared I was about to slip into another reality again.
But then I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Spinning around, I saw Miller half sitting up on the floor, his service revolver in his hand, its smoking barrel pointing right at my face now; there was no chance for him to miss a second time.
I didn’t think. I just pulled the Luger’s trigger and watched as a neat little hole appeared in the middle of Miller’s forehead before he was able to get off another shot. He folded like a cheap suit and hit the floor for the last time.
The room spun for a few seconds, my ears ringing again from the guns’ reports. Everything seemed to slow down, the way it had during the roughest parts of the war. In fact, part of me was convinced I was back in France or Germany, a dead enemy at my feet and the smell of gunpowder filling my nos
trils, and I felt the same wave of nausea I’d often encountered then. Looking back on it now, it makes me think the whole thing of moving between worlds isn’t so unusual. Standing there in that tower room—part Spanish mission and part medieval castle and all Beverly Hills opulence—was practically the same as occupying three worlds at once, and it was neither the first nor the last time that I felt transported back to the war while in the middle of civilian drama. Sometimes the trigger was a backfiring engine or a bursting balloon, but at other times it could be something as simple as the scent of copper that put me in the middle of a bloody fight or the squish of mud beneath my shoes that sent me back to those rainy, corpse littered fields.
On that day, though, I didn’t have the time or the presence of mind to wax philosophical. The mental hiccup that told me I wasn’t in California anymore was an easy enough thing to shake off after a just a second or two, and it was just as easy to shake off any concern I might have had for the detective I’d just drilled.
It was Annabelle I focused on instead as she slipped face down to the tiled floor, her blood already beginning to pool. I dropped down beside her, feeling for a pulse on her throat; the one I found was faint, barely there. A wave of guilt passed over me. If I’d only stayed out of California, I thought. Sure, coming here had helped me figure out that I wasn’t completely crazy, but I probably would have arrived at that conclusion on the east coast after a while. If I’d only listened to what Annabelle had said in her letter and left her alone to pursue her fantasies, implanted though they may have been by Beadle and his cronies, she’d have been just fine—or, if not fine, at least more than barely alive.
Others were more to blame, though, for what had happened to Annabelle.
Enraged, I turned the Luger toward the doorway and saw Beadle, Elsa, and Mrs. Masterson all shrink back, pressing against the goons who stood behind them.
“Don’t shoot!” Beadle shouted, and he sounded so pathetic as he begged that I almost pulled the trigger out of spite. But then I pulled the other trigger instead, wanting the son of a bitch to shut up, wanting them all to fall in a heap from the effects of Guillermo’s trick gun so I could carry Annabelle past them, down the stairs, and away from everything that had brought her to ruin.
Nothing happened.
I should have guessed it. The duration of Detective Miller’s unconsciousness had been terribly short, and now I knew why; the power source in the Garcia Industries gun was spent. The dose of whatever it sent out that Miller had received had kept him down for just a fraction of the time that Annabelle, Elsa, and the punks from my first night in California had been out. The gun was nothing more than a fancy paperweight now, and I tossed it aside, for the moment no longer concerned about returning Guillermo Garcia’s property.
Dropping to my knees, I turned Annabelle over as gently as I could and cradled her for the few seconds she had left. The wound was in her chest, the material of her fancy dress now a slick mess. Her lips moved, and in my more imaginative moments, I like to think she mouthed the word “Sorry” to me as she died, but it might just as easily have been “Sweetheart” or “Bastard.” I’ll never know for sure.
When I looked up again, Detective O’Neal was in the doorway with two uniformed officers behind her. Beadle’s goons were gone, probably ushered downstairs by another officer. I had no idea how long the police had been there; so wrapped up had I been in Annabelle’s passing that I had been oblivious to their arrival and their removal of Beadle’s muscle. So now it was just Carmelita and me inside the tower room with the three members of the police force huddled in the doorway along with Cosmo Beadle, Elsa Schwartz, and Geneva Masterson, all eyes but mine on the two bodies on the floor.
I made eye contact with O’Neal and saw in the hardened glance she returned that it must have been obvious to her from the second she reached the top of the spiral stairs that there had been no point in rushing forward to render aid or call for an ambulance to get Annabelle or Miller to the nearest emergency room. Laying the Luger on the floor beside Annabelle’s body, I got to my feet, for the first time aware of how much blood was all over the only clothes I had left.
“Mr. Strait,” O’Neal said.
“Detective,” I answered, barely audible.
“I appear to be a few minutes late.” She let out a long breath and then added, “I assume that’s your bullet in my partner’s head?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “It was him or me. He’d already taken Annabelle down, as you can see.” I almost choked on the words.
“I can see,” she said, her tone no-nonsense but not angry.
“She saw him taking aim,” I said with a sigh, “and threw herself between me and the bullet. I…He would have fired again if I hadn’t…It all happened so fast.”
O’Neal stepped forward then and went through the formality of checking for a pulse on both Annabelle’s neck and Miller’s. When she checked her partner, she pulled at his collar a bit and revealed the corner of his Crossover tattoo.
“He was working with them,” I said still reeling from Annabelle’s death. “He kidnapped Carmelita here, who the rest of you know as Gemma Blaylock. The gizmo on the table has some sort of mind control property to it, almost like hypnosis, I suppose. I expect he was trying to get information on what happened in Las Vegas.”
During the shooting and everything that had followed, Carmelita had stayed near the table. She hadn’t spoken or shouted, and when I looked at her now, I saw confusion in her eyes. Maybe she was still disoriented from having been hooked up to Elsa’s movie machine, but I felt pretty sure her disorientation was one more bit of evidence in support of the theory I’d been building.
O’Neal straightened up again. “I’m going to need to take the lot of you downtown. We’ll get your witness statements then. If you could please refrain from saying anything more until we get everyone isolated, Mr. Strait?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “About all this anyway. Before we leave, there’s one other thing you need to know, though, Detective.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow, as if to say that all of this must surely be enough. By way of answer, I pointed to Garcia’s spent weapon on the floor.
“It’s not a conventional gun,” I said. “Meant to be non-lethal if used the right way. Right now, it’s lost its charge altogether, so it’s completely useless.”
Still looking at me skeptically, she approached and picked the gun up off the floor, handling it by the trigger guard and setting it down on the table.
“You’ll find my fingerprints on it,” I said, “along with Dr. Schwartz’s over there. You might find Carmelita’s on it, but I have my doubts.”
Then I looked at Geneva Masterson, recalling the daggers she’d been staring at Carmelita, and added, “And if I had any money left to my name, I’d bet it all on the possibility you’ll find Geneva Masterson’s prints somewhere on it, too. Maybe only a partial at this point since it’s been handled a lot since she used it to kill her husband.”
“That’s absurd!” Beadle shouted.
The widow Masterson said nothing, however. She just gave me the same cold stare I’d seen in the other world.
“Not absurd at all, Mr. Beadle,” I said. “I’d lay odds on the fact that her husband was a serial philanderer.” I watched Geneva Masterson’s face as I said this, and her eyes darted again to Carmelita, that same icy burn in her pupils as I’d seen before; I’d been reasonably sure I had her number then, but now there was no doubt. “You could almost say it was in his nature to be unfaithful, and Mrs. Masterson finally had enough. When she caught him in Las Vegas with Carmelita here, she also found Carmelita’s gun, and she used it.”
“You said it wasn’t lethal,” O’Neal said.
“I said it wasn’t lethal when used in the intended way. When not used correctly, it can be just as deadly as any other gun.” Recalling the newspaper story of the cowboy actor who’d died from the wrong kind of horseplay, I said, “You know what happens if you put a blank
round into a revolver and pull the trigger with the muzzle pressed up against a person’s head, don’t you?”
“I do.”
I nodded at the gun on the table. “The same thing happens with that little thing. That’s what did all the damage to Masterson’s skull. That’s my guess, anyway. Someone put it right up to his head and pulled the trigger without knowing that was the only way the gun could be used lethally. Lance Masterson’s unlucky day, I guess. And, like I said, I’m reasonably sure the person who pulled the trigger was Mrs. Masterson. Then she tried to make it look like Carmelita had killed him, but that didn’t work out.” Turning to O’Neal, I said, “Have your pals up at the checkpoint run their data, and I’ll bet they come up with a match for Mrs. Masterson coming through a few hours before Carmelita and I did. Maybe under a different name, but that’s not a face that’s easy to hide.”
I gave Mrs. Masterson a cold stare now, and she gave it right back.
“If not,” I added, “I assume you keep records of airships coming in from out of state. Comb through them, and you’re either going to find her ID or an image of her disembarking while traveling under an assumed identity. That’s all you’ll need.”
“Tell him this is ridiculous,” Beadle said, half turning to Geneva Masterson.
She obliged him in her way. “Uncle Cosmo is right,” she said. “I haven’t been out of California in more than a month.”
“We’ll see about that,” O’Neal said. She nodded toward the door. “All of you down,” she said with enough authority to start the whole group’s descent.
I let Carmelita go ahead of me and hung back a bit with O’Neal, so we were the last ones to leave the tower. It felt wrong to leave Annabelle’s body behind, all alone with the corpse of the man who’d killed her, but there was nothing else that could be done.
The Blacktop Blues: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 1) Page 22
