Died to Match (33 page)

Behind me, Talbot stirred slightly, and I tried to will him into silence. If Corinne stayed focused on her sorrow, instead of her wrath, maybe we could survive this. She continued to
stare at me without answering, but at any rate, I didn’t seem to be making things worse. Her chest rose and fell in short, shuddering breaths, as if she couldn’t quite take in enough air, and her round, fair face was misted with perspiration. She backed away from me with uncertain steps, until she felt the balcony railing at her back.

“You’ve been very unhappy, haven’t you?” I said.

The murmuring from the dance floor down below had subsided to a mass shuffling of footsteps and the occasional clipped sound of someone giving directions; Rhonda must be clearing the building. We were marooned up here, hanging over open space, flanked by the light towers and dazzled by the monster images that were still moving on the enormous video screen, the huge mouths of singers working silently, giant hands playing soundless guitars.

That was the view before us, across the Sky Church. Behind us lay the empty atrium, the guitar sculpture spreading above deserted corridors and stairs. No rescuers could approach us from the atrium or reach the Sound Lab without Corinne seeing them through the glass wall. And there was no telling what she would do when that happened.

“You’ve been unhappy, and worried about the future,” I continued in a low, lulling tone. “You’re scared about what’s been going on lately. It must seem like a nightmare.”

Corinne nodded at that, and her grip on the pistol seemed to relax ever so slightly.

“You must be tired,” I said. “Has it been difficult to sleep?”

“Yes,” she whispered, in a voice like a weary child’s. The blue eyes blinked back tears. “I have dreadful dreams.”

“That’s hard,” I said sympathetically, staying perfectly
still, trying to reach her with my voice and my eyes. “It’s hard when you can’t get any rest. It makes everything so confusing. But you need to rest.”

Corinne was listening, wavering a little, and for a moment I could feel her exhaustion and despair. But my own exhaustion was so intense, and my sympathy for her so vivid, that I made a ghastly mistake.

“You need to rest,” I repeated. “You need to take care of your baby.”

“Roger’s baby,” she said reverently.

“Mine?” Roger Talbot, the philanderer, the moron, the monster of ego, actually stepped past me and confronted her, his bold dark eyes blazing under the patrician silver hair, for all the world as if he were just as invincible to bullets as he was to any sense of decency or conscience. “I don’t believe for a minute—”

“It’s true!” Corinne howled, and the gun swung wildly from him to me and back again. “You wouldn’t listen, you didn’t want to hear, but once I found out about the baby I never let another man touch me again. I was faithful to you, and all the time you were fucking that snotty Mexican bitch. She wasn’t even an American!”

This last bit of lunacy seemed to startle her as much as it did the rest of us. Talbot retreated a step, and young Crystal began to cry, in little hiccupping gasps that were sure to catch Corinne’s attention at any moment. From the corner of my eye I saw Travis take Crystal’s hand, and she managed to silence herself. All four of us knew what might happen to any rival for Talbot’s interest, however recent or casual that interest might be.

“How could you, Roger?” Corinne herself was sobbing now, but they were angry sobs, and her knuckles were white
once more on the handle of the gun. Beyond her, on the screen, a woman’s giant face was contorting in pain or ecstasy as she sang words we couldn’t hear. “How could you give her the ring? It was my ring, you said so when you showed it to me, you said we just had to wait, but you lied, you gave it to her!”

She was working herself up to a climax, I could see it coming, and all I could think to do was interrupt. “Is that why you killed Angela, Corinne? Because she saw you throwing a necklace into the harbor? It wasn’t a necklace, it was the diamond ring on a long gold chain, wasn’t it?”

That broke her momentum, and she looked at me like a scolded puppy. The mood swings reminded me, horribly, of the last time I saw Mercedes alive.

“It wasn’t my fault,” she whined. “None of this was my fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t, honey. You couldn’t help it. But don’t make it any worse, all right? Corinne, Tommy is still alive.” The others stared at me as they absorbed this new horror, the idea that she had already attacked someone, here, tonight. “He’s alive, but he needs a doctor. Let Travis go and find him a doctor, OK? You don’t want to hurt Travis, do you? Just like you didn’t really want to hurt Tommy. You want to help Tommy, don’t you, Corinne?”

She looked baffled by all the questions, but at least I was distracting her from Roger, who was surely the short fuse to her final explosion.

“Won’t you let Travis go help Tommy? Please?” I made a small, appealing gesture with one hand. Another mistake.

“No!” she shrieked, and we all recoiled, waiting for the shot. But Corinne Campbell had more to say.

“Don’t move, don’t anyone move, y’hear me? And stop
talkin at me. Just listen.” Her Southern drawl was coming back, and with it a subtle shift in her mood, a sense of power, even pleasure, at finally having the upper hand over the man who had tormented her. “Are you listening, Roger?”

He licked dry lips and nodded, finally understanding just how close we were to the final disaster.

“This is your fault,” she said, using the little gun like a pointer to gesture at Talbot’s impeccably tailored trousers. He flinched, and she gave a foolish little giggle. “You’re the one who should have gone overboard, not me.”

I tried to calculate the best way to move, once Corinne fired at him, as she inevitably would. Drop to the floor? But what if she keeps shooting? Rush at her? And send us both over the railing? I was closer to her than Crystal or Travis, so anything I did would protect them for a few critical seconds, but the thought of plummeting through all that empty air, of the floor below rushing upwards to meet us, sent a paralyzing chill through me that seemed to freeze both breath and blood, thought and action. But I’ll have to do it. When the gun goes off, I’ll throw myself at her—

“Hey, Corinne, look at me! Is this wild or what?” Comically, insanely, Aaron’s head and shoulders had appeared in midair, six feet or so beyond the railing. He was forcing a grin, but his face was blanched white as his shirt, and the sweat pouring from his forehead had dissolved the makeup and exposed his black eye. This man, this wonderful foolish man who was afraid of heights, had climbed the struts of a light tower, fifty feet into the air, leaving his tuxedo jacket and shoes behind and moving silently in his socks until he could give us the distraction that we needed to save ourselves.

Corinne whirled to face him, bringing the gun around
with a wild cry of alarm. Aaron, exposed on his perch, clung to the metal bars and closed his eyes. In the same infinite moment, Roger Talbot bolted for the balcony door, Crystal slumped over in a faint, and Travis and I launched ourselves at Corinne. He went high and I dove low—the side slit in my gown ripped almost to the waist—as we knocked the gun from Corinne’s hand and brought all three of us crashing to the floor in a chaotic and very painful heap.

Travis seemed to have stunned himself, and Corinne went completely limp and began to weep and moan. As I struggled out from under their combined dead weight, I heard the pistol strike the Sky Church floor far below with a tiny, harsh clang and a drawn-out metallic clatter that seemed to go on echoing forever in my mind.

T
HANKSGIVING IS THE PERFECT HOLIDAY
. Y
OU COOK, YOU
eat, you count your blessings. Except for the dirty dishes and the indigestion, what could be better?

One of my blessings in recent years—having Lily as a friend—brought with it the fine fringe benefit of a turkey feast at her house. Who knew that I’d also be thankful for not getting splattered all over the floor of the Sky Church? But on this particular Thanksgiving morning, less than a week after the crisis, it was much on my mind. Especially with my mother on the phone talking about it.

Mom had called the day after the wedding, of course, because she buys The Seattle Times in Boise, and could hardly miss “Shooting at Experience Music Project Leaves One Critical, Suspect Arrested” on the front page. Now she was calling again, from my brother Tim’s home in Illinois, to wish me happy Thanksgiving and to fret some more.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said again as I sat in my chilly kitchen, muffled up in my robe, and contemplated the culinary adventure before me. In a fit of holiday spirit I’d promised Lily a pie, and although she assured me that store-bought would be fine, I was determined to concoct the thing myself.

“But this crazy woman could have shot you,” said my
mother. Now that she knew her darling daughter was safe, she seemed to almost relish the idea. What a story for her poker club. “You could have been killed.”

“Well, I wasn’t, and you’re beginning to sound ghoulish about it.”

“Don’t be silly, Carrie!” Only my mother called me Carrie. “I was worried sick. You should have called me before I read about it in the paper.”

“I was busy, Mom. It was a long night, and Tommy was in surgery for hours. I’m sorry, I just didn’t think about it.”

“But he’s all right now? The poor man.”

Lucky man was more like it. Boris had stopped Tommy’s bleeding with his wadded-up dress shirt, and clever Rhonda had summoned an ambulance crew the minute she heard there was a gun in the building. Tommy was back in a room at Harborview, but in satisfactory condition, and managing a faint wisecrack or two for his constant stream of affectionate visitors. The whole affair, dreadful as it was, could have been far, far worse.

Mom went on, “I read that the publisher, is his name Talbot? I read that he’s running for mayor over there. It’s wonderful, how brave he was.”

I sank my head in one hand, listening to her rattle on and deciding not to disabuse her of the heroic impression that Roger Talbot had managed to convey to the press. The man was a master. While the rest of us were at the hospital worrying about Tommy, he gave a long, nonexclusive interview to anyone with a mike or a pen.

Somehow the ugly little scuffle that brought Corinne to the floor of the balcony had evolved into a denouement featuring Roger and Travis as coolheaded heroes, with Crystal
and myself as adoring onlookers, and Aaron as an anonymous EMP employee who had merely shouted at Corinne to distract her.

Talbot even called me “plucky,” the son of a bitch. By the time I was aware of his manipulations, the next morning, a call to the paper with my own version of events would have seemed like self-serving mudslinging. Besides, the last thing I wanted was more column inches associating Made in Heaven weddings with gunfire.

What I wanted was to have Aaron write up an accurate account of the incident, for his own paper or someone else’s. But Aaron refused to talk about his role—his truly heroic role— because he had frozen up on the tower afterwards and had to be helped down, step-by-step, by a police officer. He saved our lives, and he was embarrassed about it. Men are so odd.

I would have argued with Aaron about his reticence, but between both our jobs and all our statements to the police, we’d hardly seen each other. I was eager to talk with him tonight. And not just talk, either. I’d made a decision.

“I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m working on a pumpkin pie.”

“Oh, good! Are you using my recipe for butter pastry?”

“Not exactly.” Of course, maybe the packaged pie shell in my freezer had some butter in it. I hadn’t read that label, only the label on the back of the pumpkin can, where it said “Quick ’N’ Easy!”

“Well, I’m sure it will be delicious. And you say your friend Alan is going also?”

“His name’s Aaron, Mom.” And I’m going to have sex with Aaron tonight, how about that? But what I said was, “He’s very nice. You’d like him. Lily likes him.”

“Then he must be nice. You tell Lily Happy Thanksgiving for me.”

Mom rang off, and I got dressed and got busy. The kitchen had warmed up nicely with the oven preheating, and my enthusiasm grew as I measured out brown sugar, hunted out the cinnamon, and whisked some eggs and evaporated milk. This is so simple, I should do it more often. I was cranking the can opener when Aaron called.

“So, Stretch, is this thing tonight formal or anything? Both my good shirts are at the cleaner’s.”

He sounded disappointingly matter-of-fact, but then he didn’t know about my secret plan for our night of passion.

“No, not at all,” I said casually. “In fact, wear some walking shoes. We usually go around Green Lake after Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Oh. Do we have to?”

“Aaron, it’s less than three miles on a paved path! Come on, it’s the Seattle thing to do.”

“OK. So long as it’s not a no-smoking lake.” I had told him Lily’s house rule about cigarettes. “You need anything for this pie deal?”

“Nope. I’m just getting it into the oven now.”

I suppose I shouldn’t cook and talk on the telephone simultaneously, but I’m on the phone so much that it’s second nature. Cooking isn’t, however. I carefully closed the oven door, wiped my hands in triumph, and went about my business, enjoying the spicy smell that spread through the house. But when I passed through the kitchen a little while later, I spotted something odd on the counter: the measuring cup of brown sugar.

“Oh, hell!” I grabbed some pot holders and hastily yanked out the pie. A dollop of pumpkin slopped onto the hot oven floor and began to blacken and smoke. “Hell and damnation.”

I was afraid of more spillage if I emptied the pie into a bowl, so instead I sprinkled the sugar over the surface and tried to stir it in with a fork. But the filling had partly solidified by now, and the fork snagged on the bottom and tore up a flap of crust. I smooshed it down as best I could, returned the whole mess to the oven, and waited patiently for the timer to sound. Once done, the pie looked… funny, with lumpy brown spots and little bubbly craters all over the surface. Maybe I could tell Lily’s boys it was a moon pie. Sighing, I set it cautiously aside to cool, and ran up to the office to check my e-mail and do some paperwork.