A Fugitive Truth (28 page)

…Nothing but surprise.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d decided to tackle Harry until I’d launched myself toward him. Probably better that way, but my decision startled me. I couldn’t even make use of the microseconds of flight to form any solid plan or decide how best to land. I had time for only one thought:

Awww shit.

I knocked Harry from the stump, but things stopped going my way right after that. He was sprawled face-first into the leaves with his arm and the pistol underneath him. But my foot caught on the stump as I took him over, and so instead of landing right on top of Harry, I went skidding through the leaf duff next to him. At least I’d anticipated landing hard. By the time Harry had struggled up, I had a chance to roll up back onto one hip and launch a roundhouse kick at his hand, with every bit of rage I had in me.

It was a good kick—I landed it just above his wrist—and I knocked the gun away. The weapon bounced off a tree and fired as it deflected back into the clearing about ten feet from where we were tangled.

The explosion of the discharge, echoing through the forest, startled us both, and we each automatically covered our heads. Not for long. We lowered our arms and stared at each other, astonished. Harry looked so surprised, so much like the gentle, quiet man that I thought I knew, that instead of punching him square in the face, I hesitated after I scrambled to my knees. That was the worst kind of mistake.

He recovered one second faster than I did and lunged forward, slamming his fist into me. I twisted away as he approached and blocked with my left arm, so that instead of catching the blow in my stomach as he’d intended, it glanced off my arm and hit the back of my ribs. That hurt like hell, but not as badly as it could have. His next punch came quickly too, smashing into my shoulder and knocking me back over onto the carpet of dead leaves. My left arm went numb and my eyes filled on the jarring double impact; I couldn’t see until I’d shaken my head clear. Only by good luck did my flailing foot trip him up, but that didn’t slow him much. Harry began to scrabble toward the pistol, breathing hard with hitching breaths.

With an animal’s noise, I flung myself on his legs as he tried to crawl away, and climbed up his back to slow him before he could get to the gun. Harry grunted and tried to roll over to get me off him. My breath was coming in gasps, tears streaming down my face as I tried to hang onto him, slow him down; he finally threw me aside, part of his coat tearing away in my hand. As he raised himself to his knees, I grabbed Harry’s hair and yanked back as hard as I could. Harry screeched as my right fist crashed into his face; I felt the skin on my knuckles tear as they hit his glasses. He immediately swung his left arm up in a brutal uppercut that caught me square on the chin.

I saw stars as his punch slammed my jaw up into my skull, and I hit the ground again, stunned. Hot blood gushed like a searing river across loosened teeth, and I shook my head again and again, unable to clear my vision. Disoriented, I couldn’t figure out where I was, where Harry was, or what was happening until I blurrily recognized his foot arcing toward my face.

I rolled to one side, trying to grab his foot, but wasn’t entirely fast enough: Harry’s toe connected with my left shoulder instead of my head. My arm, already throbbing, went dead to all sensation but blinding pain, so that instead of pulling him over as I’d hoped, he only stumbled. Then he surprised me. Instead of kicking me again, Harry staggered over and picked up the pistol.

I tried to get up and stumbled, a tearing sensation in my left shoulder sending electric sparks through my brain. That shoulder had already taken more than its fair share of abuse in my life and the sheer intensity of the pain now scared me. I backed up and got up very slowly as Harry lurched over, holding the pistol unsteadily before him.

“Don’t…don’t make me,” he panted. Blood was streaming down the side of his face, and he kept shaking his head gently, as if I’d knocked something loose. I’d torn his overcoat nearly off his back, and dirt, pine needles, and the spines of leaves clung to what was left. “I don’t want to, don’t make—”

“Don’t want to?” I said, my words like a moan. “What about Faith, Harry? And poor”—I struggled to catch my breath—“stupid Jack? What about Pam?”

“She didn’t give me any choice!” Harry was adamant. “They didn’t give me any choice, it was up to them, it was their decision…”

He drew closer, but still looked unsteady. I tried to muster the resources to get the gun away from him again, but I didn’t think that I could move fast enough to surprise him. Giving myself the chance to catch my breath and catch him off guard, I tried words instead. Anything to keep him away.

“Why?” I asked as evenly as I could. My breath was still coming in gasps, and I could feel my jaw beginning to swell. I could feel one or two of my teeth wiggling, loose in the back of my mouth, and the shocking, body-warm taste of blood sliding across my tongue. “Harry, what could ever make you—”

“Shut up! You don’t understand, nobody understands!” he shouted. But instead of being overcome by what he’d done, as I’d hoped, he seemed to get angrier with me for reminding him. Harry stepped in quickly, grabbed the collar of my sweater, and practically lifted me to my feet. As I reached out to steady myself against him, he rapped my fingers away with the pistol. Reflex made me stick my bruised knuckle in my battered mouth—that did neither any good.

“Faith didn’t give me any choice.” Harry took a breath. “And Jack was always his own worst enemy,” he continued more calmly. The blood and sweat were drying on his face like a gruesome mask, and one lens in his fancy tortoise shell glasses was cracked. He seemed to be recovering a lot faster than I was, though: He had a mission. “And now you’ve complicated things again, I need to consider my—”

I was bracing myself to drive my elbow into his stomach, when Harry suddenly whipped me around, slipping an arm across my neck. I saw why in a second: Detective Sergeant Kobrinski had crept up on us at the far edge of the clearing and had her pistol aimed at us. To my surprise, she looked unharmed.

I wasn’t comforted, however. Harry tightened his grip on me and raised his gun to my head. “Options. I need options, Emma,” he said. “And right now, you’re all the options I have.”

“P
UT THE GUN DOWN
, H
ARRY
,” P
AM ORDERED
calmly. “Let Emma go.”

“No, put
your
gun down, throw it away from you,” Harry countered. “We’re going to walk away and you’re not going to do a damned thing about it. Not if you’re smart.”

“You okay, Emma?” Pam never broke eye contact with Harry.

“Uh…yeah,” I said. But I could feel my jaw swelling and my neck was aching from the way that Harry was holding me. My feet hurt from spending so much time on tiptoe but that was nothing compared to the way my shoulder felt. I wished my arm would just fall off and be done with it. I could feel Harry’s heart pounding, could smell the blood and fear from him. I wished that I could figure out what to do, but the last thing I wanted was to screw up any advantage that the detective might have.

“Harry, let go of Emma,” she said. “You don’t want to make this any worse than it is.”

“And if you don’t back off, you’re going to have corpses here!”

As if “here” were the cue, a tremendous crashing was heard alongside of us. Several things happened, all too quickly. Harry tightened his grip across my neck. I clung to his arm, as much to steady myself as to try to keep him from accidentally strangling me, and tucked my chin to prevent that. I thought that I might have been able to get out of his grasp, but then there was the gun, and I had no idea what the detective might have in mind, and heavens knew, she was the expert here. Detective Kobrinski, not knowing what to expect, rapidly swung her pistol from us to the source of the disturbance, then back again. And Michael Glasscock skidded into the clearing, tripped over a log, and landed face-first in the leaves before us all.

“Goddamn trees,” he muttered, picking himself up. Then noticing the tableau onto which he’d stumbled, Michael paused.

“Holy shit,” he whispered in awe. He scrambled backward until he was alongside the detective, staring at Harry incredulously the whole time. “It
is
you!”

I could feel Harry relax slightly; Michael was no threat to him. “I don’t think things have changed materially, Detective. Now there are just more innocent people to die. Lose your gun!”

She hesitated, with a scowl for Michael.

“Throw it away!” Harry screamed, jamming the muzzle of the pistol to my temple.

I felt the gun press into my head and squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh God!” I flinched, sending another spasm of pain through my jaw.

“Okay, Harry? Harry?” Pam’s voice was urgent, attention-grabbing. “Harry. You’re in charge.” Detective Kobrinski tossed her weapon carefully on the ground behind her. “You’re the one who can decide to end this right now.”

Harry’s gun pulled back, maybe a millimeter. I thought I felt the pressure ease up, or maybe it was just what I was hoping.

My heart sank as she said, “We can work this out.”

As much as I didn’t like being caught between two gun barrels, this was even more alarming: I knew things were going to start happening now. Every fiber of my being was straining to be ready for whatever was going to come. I could only wait for the right moment—and when that moment came? Well, the only advice I could find to give myself was
Don’t screw up
.

“How about a trade, Harry?” Pam offered. Her voice was so calm, so reasonable, I would have done it in a heartbeat. “Me for Emma.”

“Not a chance.” Harry swallowed, licked his lips. “Now here’s what we’re going to do—”

I don’t think Harry realized he was shouting, another assault on my ears. I don’t think he realized how tightly he was holding onto me, close to choking me.

“—We’re going to leave here, and you’re going to stay. If I see you near us, I’ll shoot her.”

Pam tried again. “Harry, you don’t have to—”

He yanked me, ignoring her. “Move!” he bellowed in my ear.

I couldn’t make my knees bend. I didn’t want to leave. “Can’t breathe,” I gasped.

“You don’t need to breathe, you need to move, now!” he screamed. A little fleck of foam flew out of his mouth past me.

I saw a tremor in the gun near my head and thought, Em, you’ve got to be better than this. You can’t give him any reason to pull the trigger. Do what Pam is always saying, just start at the beginning, move from the known to the unknown. Just do what he says, just for a minute, and then we’ll see. Break the problem into steps, deal with each one, and then we’ll see.

The first step was the hardest to take, but I did it. After that it was easier; with that little bit of forward motion Harry began to practically drag me, and all I had to worry about was keeping my balance. Once I’d made the decision to move, it began to be easier to think beyond myself. To consider how I might survive this mess. Break it into steps, just like research, just take each big problem and break it into smaller ones. Stay focused and deal with every opportunity as it comes. Just don’t screw up.

We lumbered awkwardly down the path toward the road that ran behind the library, off Shrewsbury land. The fence was chainlink here, and a large section of it was cut and bent back, creating an exit for us. An old dark Volvo station wagon was parked there. Harry opened the front passenger door and shoved me in.

“Get in,” he ordered, shoving me over to the driver’s seat. “You drive.” He followed me and slammed the door shut behind him.

There was no way that I was going to make this
easy
for him. “I can’t…my arm is…dislocated,” I protested. My left arm felt horrible, but I didn’t really know what was wrong with it. This was just the beginning of my plan, Step One: Don’t be any more help than necessary.

“You’ll manage. I have great faith in you.” Harry got in the passenger’s side, shut the door, and handed me the keys. “Don’t try anything. I’m not a great shot—”

I thought back to the day at the historical center. Had it been him?

“—but even I can’t miss from a foot away.”

Don’t try anything? That thought almost made me giggle. But giggling would have turned quickly to sobbing, and I couldn’t afford that now. Don’t try anything? That made Step Two clear: Don’t inspire confidence in your abilities. I didn’t even have to think about that one. Out of habit, I turned to fasten my seat belt, but then I reconsidered: I might want to make a hasty exit. Instead I probed at my shoulder, and didn’t need to fake flinching; it hurt like hell. Step Three: Be patient and wait for your moment. But don’t wait too long. And don’t screw up, don’t screw up, don’t screw up…

Harry wiped at his face, seeming tired. “Now drive. Not too fast, not too slow. Nothing funny.”

I pulled away, heading down the road that encircled the Shrewsbury compound until we were out on the road in front of the guard house, heading toward Monroe.

Harry was starting to shake a little now, a delayed reaction to the confrontation. He pushed the cigarette lighter in, and was talking breathlessly, almost animatedly. “Okay, now, you’re the one who’s going to decide how long you live, and the sooner you realize that, the better for both of us. So you try anything, there is absolutely nothing to keep me from getting rid of a little dead weight, right?”

I nodded, concentrated on driving and thinking hard. My arm and jaw both ached, throbbing out of synch.

“You sit there, you keep quiet, you don’t get hurt.”

I thought, “Too bad you can’t say that in the library.” I was surprised that I still had a sense of humor, and I clung to it. I needed anything that would help me think beyond my fear and pain right now.

We pulled down the road and I accelerated to about forty-five miles an hour.

When we were past the gate, I tried a question, testing the waters. “Where are we going?”

“The airport,” he said after a second. “Head toward town. You may have a longer ride than I thought.”

I didn’t like the sound of that: too many variables. But the road to Monroe was very familiar to me and that led to a modicum of resolve. I eased up on the accelerator ever so slightly. “What about the books, Harry? Can you just leave them like this?”

Oddly, that question didn’t bother him as I thought it might; I wondered what else might be going on here.

“The books are safe,” he said confidently, rubbing at the still-bleeding cut on his hand. “They’re where no one can hurt them. I can get them later.” The cigarette lighter popped out, and he lit a cigarette from a crumpled package on the dash. It seemed to relax him. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing.

I thought furiously. “It was all for the books, wasn’t it, Harry?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “People don’t realize how carelessly they destroy the past. You ought to be able to appreciate that.”

I looked in the rearview and saw Pam Kobrinski’s car following us, not too far back, but not too closely either. It might have been the sight of it that inspired me, having driven down this road twice before, expressly to see the detective. Suddenly, a plan sprang full-blown into my mind, but just the thought of it made my stomach turn.

Harry turned and saw the other car too. “Shit. Slow down.” His moment of respite was over. “Let her see I’ve still got the gun pointed at you.”

I slowed down even more, and the car fell back and matched our speed.

“Okay, pick it up again. C’mon.” His hand was shaking with the gun in it.

I accelerated and the detective’s car sped up too, never increasing or decreasing the distance between us. Harry was feeling crowded, I could tell, something that would only worsen if we started running into any more cops coming from Monroe. The mere thought of what might happen at a roadblock sickened me.

“
You
can understand, can’t you Emma?” Harry almost pleaded; he needed a friend. “Why I had to do what I had to do? They were going to destroy history, and I had to stop them.”

I stalled. “I…don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “It can’t be worth human lives, can it, Harry?” Just talking hurt my mouth, but that was the least of my troubles. I had to keep him talking, I had to keep him distracted. “And what about Sasha?”

Harry’s voice softened. “I love Sasha. I’ve never felt like that about anyone before, and what’s more, I’m sure she loves me back. It’s amazing.” Then his face hardened again. “It wasn’t until Faith began to threaten me that I had to think seriously about…keeping her quiet.”

“Keeping her quiet.” I thought I could simply repeat the words, but something in my voice goaded Harry.

“Faith brought that on herself! I couldn’t have Sasha find out. I couldn’t lose her. It’s Faith’s own fault she’s dead.”

I kept my mouth shut, thinking as hard as I could.

“I took the books. I never meant to hurt anyone.” He nodded, inhaling deeply. “Hell, it seemed like no one would even miss them. It should have been no more than a puzzling loss, perhaps chalked up to poor management or petty theft.

“But don’t get me wrong, Emma. When we’re dead and dust, there’s nothing left to speak for us. Nothing left of our thoughts. Books are the only legacy of our minds. The only way to touch the past. And they were treating them like they were baseball cards to be traded.” He took an angry drag off his cigarette and coughed a little. “No, baseball cards get more respect.”

“But you don’t keep everything you buy, do you, Harry?” I reasoned carefully. “You decide what stays, what is exchanged for something more important.” I couldn’t afford to seem like I was challenging him, not with the gun, his frayed nerves, and that dangerous look in his eye. I needed to divert him, however, and continued as evenly as I could, following Kobrinski’s lead in letting him believe he had all the power, which was no real stretch for me.

While I spoke, my mind raced, trying to form my plan. I’d driven down this road often enough to pick my spot. The trick now was timing. The only problem was that the view I had admired so much before, the great drop to the next valley, now filled me with dread. If I misjudged the distance by so little as a couple of feet…

“That’s right,
I
decide,” Harry answered. “That’s why Whitlow, the board, hired me. But they were starting to interfere with the process, with my work, my life, and so I had to act fast to save the books from those Philistines. The board wanted to sell some of the best things, the oddest things, because they didn’t think they were as important as some of the first editions. So I began to move them.”

I ventured a quick look. I could see the heightened color in his face, where the blood didn’t cover it.

“But then Sasha came along. She…is special. I thought, maybe, one day, I could tell her. She might understand, and if not, she need never know.” Harry continued, incensed. “But then Faith told me she knew, that she’d seen me heading through the woods one night. At first, she made me believe that she got it, that she could help, in fact. When I saw she was toying with me, she began to…make demands. She’s vile, Emma, you have no idea. And when I finally balked, she threatened to tell Sasha. But I couldn’t afford to let her do that.”

He wasn’t worried about losing his job or the police, I thought. He was worried about Sasha.

“Sasha changed the world for me. She was worth any number of Faiths. Emma, you…you
have
to understand.”

I didn’t like the tone in Harry’s voice; it was harsh and insistent. “What about Jack? What about my room?” He was talking now, he wanted to talk, and I needed him to concentrate on that and not on me. I kept my eyes carefully on the road. “How could Jack have seen you carrying Faith to the stream? You can’t see it from the house.”

“Jack never saw me carrying Faith that night; he saw me carrying a tarp from the house—I didn’t want to leave any traces of her in the car. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I’d never…I should have just taken her into the woods. I thought that the water would help…disguise what had happened. When I saw Jack’s note, it was a simple matter to invite him for a drink—drinks—later on. I didn’t know if she’d given you her diary…”

“You pulled me off the stool.” I kept my voice carefully neutral, inviting him to continue. “And burned the diary?” My humming nerves almost blotted out the pain in my jaw, made the rest of the world outside of the car recede. I had to struggle to keep my plan focused in my head.