A Grave Talent (14 page)

"You're going to be damn sore tomorrow, Tommy."

He thought for a moment. "Not as sore as you'd be if I'd let you go."

"No," she agreed, and started to laugh again until sensation came back to her fingers. She staggered to her feet, moved away from the water, and sat down on a log to begin the necessary process of removing several gallons of water from shoes and clothing. The weakness in her hands was terrible, and she concentrated on squeezing out the sodden jacket until she looked up to see Tommy seriously pouring about a quart of water from a boot, and she started laughing again, weakly, until she needed to go behind the bushes, but the thought of peeling off her wet, clinging trousers was too much for her, so she just lay back and laughed until the tears came, and then the telephone rang.

It was the walkie-talkie, crackling and muffled by the water-sogged heap of cloth and its plastic covering. It squawked angrily for quite some time before Kate uncovered and unwrapped it.

"Good evening, Al, at least I assume this is Al--who else would call at such a totally inconvenient time? Remind me to tell you sometime what I think of your telephone calls, Al. What can I do for you? Over."

His voice came blasting tinnily out from the machine.

"Thank God you're all right, are you all right, and what about Chesler? Tyler saw what he said looked like the bridge wash by a minute ago. Over."

"It was the bridge. We're both wet but thanks to Tommy unhurt, just bangs and a mild case of hysterics, but if I sit here and chat with you we'll both freeze to death, so I think I'll sign off if it's all the same to you." And she did so.

All four feet squished as they walked, but despite the wind the effort of movement kept the cold from becoming seriously threatening, and the path back to the Road was both shorter and less strenuous than it had been on the other side. It was nearly full dark when they reached the deserted road.

"Where are we now, Tommy?"

"About a half a mile up from the washout."

"Then it's about a mile to the Dodsons?"

"Is that where we're going?"

"No, you're going home. It shouldn't take you more than ten minutes and it's not that dark. I'm going on up."

Tommy stood for a long minute, his face screwed up with the effort of thought. Then he shook his head and turned decisively uphill.

"I suppose you can threaten me with your gun, or handcuff me to a tree, but short of that you won't get rid of me. Tyler told me to guide you, and that's what I'm going to do. Sorry, Casey, you're stuck with me." She saw his teeth flash white in the dark and heard him move off. She fell in beside him and undipped the flashlight from her belt.

"All right, and thank you, Tommy. I'll take you, but on one condition: you have to promise me that if I tell you to do something, you'll do it, immediately, no questions. Even if you think I'm in danger. You've saved my life once tonight, but remember, I'm a cop, and it's what I'm paid to do. Promise me? No hesitations?"

"Okay. We're going to the Dodsons', then?"

"No, we're not. We're going to see Vaun Adams."

Something in her voice stopped him dead. She kept walking.

"Vaunie? But you don't... you can't think... Vaun? But, she's..."

"I think it would be best if you went home, Tommy, I really do."

"But you're not going to arrest her? She couldn't have killed those girls, she couldn't have."

"Tommy, do you know anything you haven't told us about?"

"No, but--"

"She couldn't have done it because you like her, is that it?"

"Yes, but--"

"I like her too, Tommy, but there's a lot of things we've found that make us want to ask her some more questions, to see what she knows."

Euphemisms for the truth, but Tommy was just simple enough to half believe them and trust in her official status. His agitation lessened, though he remained dissatisfied. At the foot of Vaun's hill he looked up to where a soft glow illuminated the windows of the big room.

"I'll go up, but I won't go in."

"You can go now, if you want. You've been a tremendous help, Tommy. I can't even begin to thank you."

"No, I'll take you to the door." Tommy had accepted the responsibility and was no more about to abandon her than he would have left Tina Merrill, although just then he'd have been hard put to decide which task was the more unpleasant.

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Kate pulled at the bell rope and listened as the deep, gonglike sound reverberated through the still house and died away. She heard no vibrations of walking (or running) feet, no sound of response. She tried the door, and was surprised to find it locked. Apprehension stirred in her. She pushed past Tommy and moved around the front of the house to the big expanse of windows. She could see the back of the sofa, the wood stove with a low fire flickering in its glass front and a squat black pot on top, a single electric light shining above the sofa, a low glossy cabinet with its door slightly ajar and a nearly empty bottle on top. No glass.

Moving faster now, Kate continued around, tried the side door, found it locked, and moved up around the house past the woodpile to the back, where the house dug itself into the hillside. Narrow windows, below knee level, were all that appeared of the lower story. A shaft of light from the swinging door that joined the kitchen and living room, propped open now, angled across the kitchen table, set with one plate, one bowl, silver. She went down on her knees, trying to see into the living room from this side.

"What's wrong, Casey? Isn't she--"

"Oh, God, oh God, I knew it," Kate moaned, and tugged impotently at the window frame. The damn woman would choose tonight to start locking her doors!

"What's the matter?"

"Damn it all, man, get out of my way," she swore and pushed him aside, ran back to the neat stack of firewood next to the side door, and snatched up a sturdy branch. At the window she ordered Tommy back out of the way, yanked off her jacket and held it up across her face, and slammed the piece of wood into the window. She ran the branch hard along all four edges, and shards of glass exploded onto the tile floor, the chairs, and the potted plants with a violent sound that shocked the night. Kate swept the splinters from the ledge with the stick, threw her jacket across the bottom of the frame, scooped the flashlight up from the ground and thrust it at Tommy, and rolled herself into the room.

"You stay there," she ordered, and crunched rapidly across the glass into the living room.

Vaun Adams lay neatly tucked up on the sofa that faced the fireplace, her face slack, one hand limp over the edge of the pillows. A small, stubby glass and a paperback novel lay on the floor beneath the hand. The tumbled black curls gleamed even in the dull lamplight, and her face was the pallor of death.

But alive, still alive, though her heart was slow and erratic.

"Tommy!" Kate yelled, "I need the nurse. Go find her, fast."

"You mean Terry Allen? Yes, I think she's up here today, though she usually works--"

"Go!" she screamed, and he took off, the flashlight skit tering its beam across the ground as he ran heavily past the windows. Kate found a bowl in the kitchen and got to work on Vaun. It took an agonizingly long time before Vaun roused enough to vomit, and she sank immediately back into her deadly lethargy. Kate left her lying on her side and retrieved the walkie-talkie. Her back twinged, for some reason, as well as her thigh. She ignored them.

"Hawkin, Hawkin, c'mon Al, I need you."

"Hawkin here, Casey, what's up?"

"Vaun Adams has taken some kind of overdose. I emptied her out, but I need medical support right now. Tommy's gone to get the nurse, but this lady needs a hospital. Is there any chance of getting a medicopter in?"

"The wind's died down a lot. If you can get a lighted clear area, they should do it. Any chance of that?"

"I can't leave her now, but when Tommy gets back we'll do something. This may be him now, gotta go."

If anything Vaun looked worse, her breathing slow and rasping. The bob and swirl of lights coming up the hill had caught Kate's eye, and she went to open the front door to Angie and Amy Dodson and a hairy man whom she took to be the absent Tony, returned from Sacramento. She spoke quickly.

"Vaun's sick. She needs a doctor. There's a medical helicopter that'll be here in twenty minutes, but they need a big, flat, clear area with lights around it to land in. Can you do it?"

Angie recovered first.

"The pony's field, that's the best place. We'll make bonfires at the four corners. Would that do it?"

"Ideal, but hurry."

Angie pulled Amy away, and Tony followed, slower. Her rapid voice came to Kate's ears. "You take Matilda and ride as fast as you can to the Newborns and to Bobby's place. Get them up here, tell them to bring some kerosene..."

Kate stirred up the fire and watched Vaun's chest rise slowly, struggling against whatever it was in her bloodstream. No sign of pills in the basin--they must have been dissolved in something. The whiskey? The woman's pale face turned slowly bluer, her breath more ragged. Kate laid two fingers against Vaun's carotid artery and picked up the walkie-talkie with the other hand.

"Al? Look, I'm not going to be able to respond for a while. I'm going to have to start CPR in a minute. She's losing it."

"Seven minutes, Casey. Are the lights going?"

"I just saw the first one start, Al. There she goes. Martinelli out."

The walkie-talkie crashed to the floor. Kate pulled Vaun onto the carpet and started the rhythmic breathing and heartbeat. Fifteen heartbeats, two quick breaths; fifteen heartbeats, two quick breaths. In two minutes Terry Allen came running in with a small bag in her hand, out of breath, and dropped next to Kate to take over the chest compression. Kate turned gratefully to the easier breathing assist, and the two women worked in silence until they felt the distant, subaudible thud of the helicopter beneath the gentle crackle from the stove and their own sounds. It came closer, and when it was directly overhead they felt the pounding of it take over their rhythm, and still they worked, until finally the uniformed paramedics clattered in with what seemed like a crowd of escorts and onlookers. One of them kneeled next to Terry and took over, the other gently pulled Kate to one side and set to work with tanks and masks. Kate knelt there, dully overcome by their competence, aware of Terry stretching her arms and clenching her hands a few times. She walked over to Kate and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Come and sit down until they can look at your cuts."

Confused, Kate looked down at her thigh, which was still oozing red through her trousers, and her arm, which had stopped bleeding.

"They're not that bad." She just wanted to sleep, for a week.

"No, I suppose you could go on leaking all over everything until you collapsed, if you like."

"It's just a gash," she protested.

"I mean the ones on your back, or hadn't you noticed that there's blood clear down your leg?"

Kate reached back with her hand, and drew it back red. She felt suddenly weak.

"No, I hadn't. It must've been from the window. Can't you do something? Just put a butterfly bandage on it or something?"

"That really should be seen by a doctor," the nurse hedged, in a tone of voice that said she often had done things of the sort without a doctor's supervision.

"I sure as hell am not going to report you to the AMA, and these two are too busy to notice. Just do something to keep it from getting any worse."

She allowed Terry to push her onto a stool, where she sat, vaguely aware of a male voice ordering the room cleared, of Terry preparing a hypodermic with novocaine, of scissors on cloth and the needle prick and spreading patches of numbness on her back, of the sure hands and the tug of stitches. All the time, though, she was fully aware only of the body on the floor, the pale chest with its small breasts and blue veins beneath the strong dark hands of the medical technicians who fought hard, impersonally, for her life. At one point she heard a distant voice that she realized had been hers.

"You're working on another Cezanne," she told them, "a female Renoir." The less occupied of the pair glanced up at her curiously. "That's Eva Vaughn."

It obviously meant nothing to him, but the other one glanced up, startled, to meet her eyes for an instant. The wide mouth remained slack, the eyes stayed rolled up under the pale lids. Behind her Terry stitched and clipped and bandaged, and disappeared for a few minutes before returning with a soft flannel shirt, slightly too long in the sleeves. She fumbled with the unfamiliar apparatus of the shoulder holster, and eased it off Kate along with the shreds of her shirt, then gently dressed Kate again. Kate never took her eyes off of Vaun.

The hand that had painted
Strawberry Fields
lay forgotten on the floor like a crushed flower. Kate sat and stared at the slightly curled fingers, the short fingernail edged with blue paint, and knew that she had not been fast enough. When one of the men sat back on his heels, she closed her eyes at the words to come.

"We have a heartbeat."

It took a second to sink home. Kate's eyes flared open to see the man's expression, of faint hope and satisfaction.

"She's not--she'll make it?"

"Her heart's beating. There's no telling yet what damage there's been, or when she'll breathe, but the heart's going. Let's get her on the stretcher," he said to his partner, and to Kate, "You'd better come too, you're not looking too hot."

"No."

"Casey, you need to see a doctor," Terry protested.

"No. I'm staying here until I'm relieved."

"Your choice." The paramedic shrugged. "She'll be at the General in town." He secured a blanket and the straps around Vaun. She looked white now, not blue. Terry fretted around Kate until the man suggested that if she would carry some equipment it would save them a trip back up. Kate followed them to the door and stood watching the men navigate their burden down the hillside to the helicopter, whose spotlights overcame the dim remains of the bonfires. She closed Vaun's front door and turned the key. How long would it be before the anesthetic wore off? she wondered. Better take a look at the place now, while I can still move.

Kate walked like an automaton through each of the downstairs rooms, checking windows, comparing the rooms with what she had seen the day before. Upstairs the studio looked much as it had, tidy, on hold but for the two brooding easels. The slab of glass that the artist used as a palette had moved and grown a smear of brilliant orange-red, and there was a large, white-bristled brush she didn't remember seeing. The figure on the undraped canvas had evolved into a woman, unidentifiable as yet. The spiral-bound drawing pad which Hawkin had left on the top of the cabinet under the south window was now on the long table. When Kate lifted the cover, the only drawing was the quick charcoal sketch of her and Hawkin coming up the hill, the tall trees still seeming to flinch away from the ominous challenge of Hawkin's gaze. She touched it lightly, and found that it had been sprayed with fixative. In the spiral binding there was an edge of perforated paper behind the drawing. Vaun had done at least one other, and torn it out--or, she corrected herself, it had been torn out. No point in looking in the fireplace for it now. She straightened, wincing, and went to check the studio windows, which had sliding metal frames. Each one was firmly caught in its latch until the second to last one next to the storage room, which flew open unexpectedly at her tug and caused her to curse with the awakened pain from a hundred sites down her back and legs and arm and--. She stood still for a long moment until the worst of it had passed, then let out her breath in a hiss and turned back to the window. She wished for her flashlight as she examined the frame and the track, slid the window shut again, pulled at it tentatively. It had latched. She looked more closely at the windowsill and picked up a tiny sliver that lay there, pursed her lips in thought, put it back down where she had found it, and went downstairs to the walkie-talkie. She swore again as she tried to bend down to where it had been kicked, just under the edge of the sofa, but gave that motion up quickly and settled for a sort of sit-and-slump to the floor. The casing looked a bit squashed; she wondered if it still worked.

"Al? Anyone home?"

"Hawkin here."

"They're taking her now. They managed to get her heart started again."

"Thank God. Are you going with them?"

"No, I'm staying here."

"Tommy Chesler was down at the washout a few minutes ago. He said you'd been hurt."

"Scrapes and cuts, that's all."

"Go with the helicopter, Casey, somebody should stay with her."

The shots were definitely wearing off, and a wave of weakness and pain and heavy exhaustion washed over her.

"Oh, Christ, Al, she's not about to take off on us, not for a long time. Damn it, she may be a vegetable the rest of her life."

"I want you out of there."

"No."

"Why the hell not, Martinelli?"

His anger sparked her own, and the truth tumbled out of her.

"I don't know why not, Al. I have a bad feeling about this, but I hurt and I've lost some blood and I know my brain isn't functioning properly. I can't think straight, but there's something here that smells rotten, and if I stay here I'll be able to see it more clearly in the morning. It's too late to argue, Al, they've already left, and I'm going to sleep for a few hours. And if you call me on this damn thing before seven tomorrow morning I will not be held responsible for your eardrums."

It was very comfortable, leaning against the sofa in front of the fire, but the upholstery and the carpet were spattered with her own blood and stank sourly of vomit and Kate couldn't bear to think of sleeping there, or on Vaun's bed for that matter. She walked across the carpet on her knees to load a few logs into the stove, crawled upright against the armchair, and stumbled upstairs again. The studio sofa was so stained and battered already, a bit of blood and dirt would pass unnoticed. She eased herself down face first, with the walkie-talkie and the probably useless gun close at hand, and fell gratefully into darkness.

The crunch of shoes on glass brought her awake some hours later. She reached for her gun, but the sudden movement of her back muscles lit the flames of the two deep cuts and the thirty-odd needle punctures from the stitches, to say nothing of the bruises. She must have made a noise, because the feet stopped.