More Bitter Than Death (30 page)

I shrugged unhelpfully. “Can’t help you with that one. But he must have remembered to pick it up for me last night, stuck it in his pocket and promptly forgot about it.” Improv on demand. I was figuring out what to do next.

He’d kept keying through computer screens, however. “Yeah, here you go. Room four-thirty-two. That’s yours, right?”

“What!”

He looked alarmed. “That’s your room number, right? Four-thirty-two?”

I suspected at least three people who had a room on the fourth floor. “Yeah, sorry, I was…spacing out there.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Early, yet.”

“Well, thanks for your help. I’ll, uh, go find him.”

I left the shop, speeding toward the elevators, when I caught myself. This is where we start doing the smart thing, I said, as I redirected myself straight over to the desk. I told the day manager everything, and she immediately called the police. I didn’t have to be told twice to stay where I was, and I settled into one of the overstuffed and poorly designed chairs. Too low to be comfortable, too deep in the seat to be
sit-able. Yet another hazard of conference hotels was the price you paid in tormented backs.

I grinned to myself: Already I was in denial about what I’d just done, about what might be happening. I couldn’t quite believe it. I was excited, I was nervous, I was doing things by the rules. Well, the rules as far as I knew them. I sat, barely able to contain my excitement, which was part fear, part thrill, part fatigue.

“Hey, Jay-Bird!” I’d looked up just in time to see my friend heading out for the parking lot with a small bag.

He was out of hearing range, but I couldn’t just sit there, I was too excited, I needed to talk to someone. I trotted out after him and was delighted to see sun and blue sky. “Hey, Jay! Over here!”

The parking lot was mostly cleared by now, but the individual cars still needed digging out. Jay fumbled with his keys at the icy lock and managed to pry the trunk open. He tossed the bag inside, slammed the trunk, dropped his keys, then swore.

I caught up to him as he dug in the snow for his keys. “Hey, you heading out?”

He was still engrossed in trying to find his keys. “Yeah, gotta make an early start. I said goodbye to everyone else last night.”

“Well, I’m glad I caught you.”

He looked up sharply, and that’s when I saw it. My smile freezing on my face had nothing to do with the cold. Jay looked as though he had a tan on just one side of his face. Not a bit of the usual variation of human skin coloration, and it stopped abruptly at his chin and temple. Unblended, it looked like a mask.

No. Please, God, no.

“I…uh, I mean, I’m glad I got to say goodbye,” I said hastily, swallowing and closing my gaping mouth. I began to rub my arms as if trying to keep warm. Maybe he didn’t re
alize I knew, now, but I wanted him to get used to my arms moving, get him thinking all my movements would be this innocent. “Got time for a quick cup of joe before you leave?” I said as I backed off a couple of steps, jerking my head as if I was heading back to the hotel and he should follow.

“Not really,” he said, bending over his keys. “I gotta hit the road. Shit.”

He’d dropped his keys again, and got tangled up in his coat as he tried to dig them out. When I saw what he was doing, saw that there was in fact a gun he was fumbling for in his pocket, I screamed as loud as I could and shoved him into the side of the car.

He wasn’t expecting it, though he should have known by now that I would fight back. Jay didn’t drop the pistol, however, and I knew that my first goal was to keep him from pointing it at me. I couldn’t believe that I was doing what I was doing, but I stepped in closer to Jay, to his side, stumbling in the compacted snow. At the same time, I grabbed his wrist and the gun by the barrel and jerked both toward him with a sharp movement. He had no choice but to let go. Suddenly I had the pistol.

I backed away, a careful step at a time, trying not to get tripped up by the snowplowed berms, and tried to put some distance between us, so that if he tried anything, I’d have time to react. Despite the fact that I’d followed Jay out of the hotel with no coat, I was sweating. Again came the delayed response of an adrenaline flood, and I began to tremble.

Jay saw this and made as if to get to his feet.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said. I swallowed again, trying to moisten the inside of my mouth, which was suddenly and desperately dry. I hate guns, I’ve always hated the damned things, but if it came to a choice, I knew what end I wanted to be on. It was heavy in my hand, and I could see that the point was wobbling crazily. I still had it trained on Jay, and he could see how badly it was jumping around;
maybe that would keep him scared enough to stay put, until some kind of help came for me or we both froze to death or I decided what to do next.

I guess the wildly shaking pistol didn’t intimidate Jay as much as I’d hoped. “You don’t know how to use that, Emma. You’re far more likely to blow your own head off. Why don’t we talk about this?”

“I know enough to keep from blowing my own head off. I know that this is the trigger, this is the safety, and this”—I pulled back the slide and did a press check—“means there’s a round in the chamber.” Thank you, Meg, thank you, thank you…

The metallic noise was wrong out there, under that broad blue sky filled with strong winter sun, where there should have been nothing but the sound of bright, biting wind through snow-laden boughs and birds whistling in flight. Jay got that too.

“I don’t know what you think is going on, Emma,” he was pleading, “but I just want to leave. I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Shut up, shut up!” I said, my voice sounding shrill even to me. “Stop talking. I know what’s going on, I know it was you, you attacked me in my room.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said, and it worried me that he was so calm about this. I didn’t want him to be calm, I wanted him to be worried what I would do. What I was capable of. He sounded too confident and I didn’t like it.

I was unable to suppress a nervous laugh. “Why else would you—?”

“I saw you talking to Widmark. I just…wanted to distract you from him. From me.”

“You were the one in the woods,” I said, not wanting to believe it.

“
No!
” He shook his head vehemently, raised his hands in denial. I watched him carefully. “This has nothing to do with you, Emma. I just want to get out of here.”

“No,” I said.

“After all these years?” he asked sadly. “You can’t do this one little thing for me?”

“What? Give you back the gun?” I felt so sick now…

He shook his head vigorously; he thought he was making inroads. “Keep it. A girl can always use a little protection, am I right? It’s not mine, it’s not registered. I got it from…friends. My friends in the woods. Just let me get in the car and go.”

I stared at him, marveling. “You must think I’m an idiot.”

“I don’t!” He backpedaled rapidly. “These friends can get you whatever you want! Name it, name anything!”

“These are the same friends you got the gun from?” I asked slowly.

“Yes! They’re very powerful people.”

“Powerful enough to be willing to shoot an FBI agent. Powerful enough to get you to attack me, and you still have the balls to call me on our friendship? You son of a bitch.”

At that moment, I heard a disembodied voice booming toward us. “You are surrounded. Put the gun down!”

It was Church.

“No, you have to cuff him first!” I surprised myself, but there was no way I was doing anything until I knew that Jay was no longer a threat.

“We’ve got it under control, Emma.” But Church sounded a little nervous. “I have my officers in place. They’re very close to you, and they’re going to show themselves now. Put the gun down.”

Suddenly I saw the heads of three very burly New Hampshire State Police officers emerge from behind various cars nearby. I lowered the pistol a mite; the more I lowered it, the closer they edged to Jay. My hand was still shaking hard. I took a couple of deep breaths, focusing on relaxing, not even on opening, my hand. Finally, my fingers relaxed enough, and I was able to put the weapon down, carefully as I could.
They cuffed Jay the instant the pistol hit the snowbank and skidded to the plowed asphalt.

Then one of them turned to me, grabbing me by the upper arm and walking me well away from the other officers.

“I hate guns,” I was saying. “I just hate them.”

“You seem pretty comfortable with them, for hating them so much.”

“A friend of mine was trying to help me understand them. She thought I’d be less nervous around them.” I thought back about Meg’s carefully reasoned instruction—carefully reasoned and utterly specious, if you ask me—and shuddered. “Now I just understand in detail why I hate them so much. I don’t think understanding the mechanics of how something kills makes it any less deadly, though I suppose that knowing how they work can help you out in a pinch, you know, if you know what’s going on, you’re that much better prepared, and I guess, safer…”

I trailed off, realizing that I was babbling. The state trooper just stood there, just as impassive as one of those guards outside Buckingham Palace.

“Let me guess,” he said after a minute. “You’re from Massachusetts, aren’t you?”

Before I could say anything, Church came over. “I’d like to have a word with Dr. Fielding, if that’s okay, Hill.” He turned to me. “So why are you out here anyway?”

“I was saying goodbye to a friend of mine.” I sighed. You will not cry now, you will not. Not now. “That’s all I was going to do.”

He nodded, eliciting again. “And things just got bad from there?”

“It was just that I saw the makeup on his face.” I was almost pleading now. “I’d tried to pretend that I didn’t notice, but I guess he saw. He tried to pull the gun on me.”

“And how did you end up with it?”

“I took it away from him.”

Church laughed nervously. “Mother of—are you out of your
mind
?”

“No. I saw a chance and I took it. It was dangerous, I know—”

“Dangerous?
Dangerous?
”

“—but it would have been so much worse if I hadn’t. I did what I had to do to protect myself. If I’d thought I was going to get into any trouble, I would have told you, just like I did all the other times.”

“All the other times you got into trouble? All those times—”

“Were purely accidental. I was always on my way to do something else. It just happened…it was just…that I knew what else was going on. I had a few more pieces of the puzzle, that’s all.” It’s not my fault, I thought fiercely. I’ve done everything right this time, as far as I could. “Like I told you about the room service and how whoever attacked me last night probably would be trying to hide his injuries. You were tracking that down, when I found Jay. I was just saying goodbye to a friend.”

T
HERE WAS THE USUAL HULLABALOO AFTER THAT
, statements and all, but I didn’t even need the information I weaseled out of Church about the autopsy to get most of the story: Jay started singing right away. He’d already given away too much to me to claim that his murder of Garrison was purely a personal matter, because of Garrison’s review of Jay’s site reports. Jay’s gambling debts had become an issue, it seemed, and he got involved with people who were all too happy to make the most of that. As odd as it sounded, an archaeologist in one’s back pocket for the right contractor is a useful thing; he has the power to move ahead with large civic and urban projects, as long as the state signs off on it. As long as no one was paying too close attention to what Jay was finding and what he was actually reporting, he had the power to greenlight any number of projects that might have been held up by archaeological reconnaissance. I’m sure that was the least of the debt he owed his “friends.”

He confessed that he’d followed Garrison out of the hotel and walked with him down the access road to the lake, trying to talk him out of what he knew Garrison would inevitably do:
Expose Jay’s falsification of data to the state. I was left with an image of Jay half-dragging Garrison as far from the hotel as he could, then knocking him over, smashing the back of his head against the ice that had formed over the shallows of the lake. The anticoagulants that Garrison was taking probably contributed to the speed with which a subdural hematoma formed, keeping Garrison unconscious while he froze to death. Realizing that the chances of Garrison recovering, or making it back to the hotel, where he was imagined to be in bed, were slim, Jay had simply walked away, leaving it to look like an accident. It was one of the few good bets that Jay had made, apparently. I’d even seen him on his way back, I remembered later, hoping he hadn’t seen me with Duncan in the slide room.

At first I was just angry with Jay—angry with what he’d tried to do to me, tried to do with our friendship, angry with his lack of self-control when it came to gambling and the thought of the sites and information that he’d cost the world forever. Then I started to think about what he must have been going through, how afraid he must have been to be willing to compromise so much, and what threats must have been hanging over him.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from alerting his “friends” to the presence of Special Agent Widmark with pictures from his cell phone at the reception. Widmark, who’d been trying to unearth the connection between him, Garrison, and the mob. They’d been out there, the night Garrison’s death was announced, shooting at Widmark, and they tried again when I’d followed him into the woods. It didn’t stop him from shooting at me that night I went to investigate the hospitality suite, or letting his associates know that I was outside, so they could take a shot at me, a sitting duck.

It was the fact that he actually made me feel outrage and pity for an old man I disliked so heartily that let anger win in the end. The notion of Garrison’s fear, in his last conscious
moments, the image of his beret soaked in blood on the ice, was what finally tipped the scales for me.

I was left sorting through this unpleasant collection of emotions and memories as I headed for my room when Duncan hurried up alongside me.

“Got a minute?”

Considering I’d only recently dismissed him as a killer, that I’d just been in a struggle over a gun with someone I counted as a friend, that he’d turned another friend against me, and that I’d learned that he’d fudged the conclusions on his dissertation, I thought I was remarkably gracious.

“What?”

“Look, can we go in? Just for a second?” he said hastily, still unsure of where he was and where I was.

I held the door open and he followed me in quickly.

“Super, thanks,” he said, when the door had shut behind us. It was just the two of us, him turning it on and me with my arms across my chest, again. He looked around, and suddenly realized what seemed unfamiliar to him. “Wow, it’s clean in here.”

“Yeah, thanks. Housekeeping came while I was talking to the cops.”

“No, I mean, no piles of your crap everywhere. Books, clothes, that’s what I remember. This Brian must really be having an effect on you.”

Suddenly, I felt my blood boiling: He doesn’t get to talk about Brian, not after what I found out about him. “I just don’t think the housekeepers should have to suffer because I’m a slob, that’s all.”

“Whoa, hey, no harm meant.” Duncan realized that he wasn’t starting off on the right foot. “I’m sure I gave the wrong impression last night. It’s just that I’m so interested in this job. I was tired, then, I was probably one or two over my limit, I came off too strong. I’d like to apologize for that.”

“Great.” I was convinced that he had to have known there
was a chance that Scott had spoken to me about the Haslett data, but there was no sign of that in his nervousness. In fact, he relaxed as soon as I answered him.

“So, I’d like to ask you again, if you’d reconsider writing a letter for me. I’m sure it would be a big help, and I’d really appreciate it.”

The phrase “really appreciate it” was heavily freighted with promise.

“You never give up, do you,” I said. The thought flitted through my head that if I said yes, he’d be out of my hair forever. I thought about what I’d be willing to pay for that, a little closure, if there were promises being made, and shivered at the possibility. “You just…don’t. Ever give up.”

He mistook my tired smile for affection, and he unleashed a twenty-gigawatt smile right back at me. “That’s me. Stubborn as hell.”

“Yeah, I know.” I wanted to slap the stupid grin off his face, I wanted to batter him into an unrecognizable paste. I wanted to eradicate him from the planet, from my past, from memory. I’d tried denial, I’d tried being human, but nothing seemed to work.

And I don’t believe in closure.

Funny thing was, something Nolan was always drumming into my head chose this moment to appear. He was always saying, if you miss hitting your opponent in one place, go for something else, but keep at it. If you miss swinging with your right hand, kick with the opposite leg. If you’re already moving in one direction, go with it. Make it work for you. If someone pushes you, react, and make it strong. Go for the fight-ending blow to start, but if it doesn’t work, keep eroding your opponent’s will to continue.

And so this time, instead of merely reacting out of a habit of anger or shame or anything else, I reacted tactically. I found my fighting stance, so to speak, got grounded and analyzed the situation. It didn’t take long, really, because I al
ready had all of the information I needed. Some of it was from a couple of decades ago, some of it was from the past four days. And now I knew what to do with it.

I looked at Duncan, really gave him a careful going over. He didn’t seemed fazed by that; he was used to people looking at him and enjoyed the sensation. Needed it, really. He’d aged better than some, that was for sure. And I could see past the slight slackening in the facial skin—something I just knew would turn into interesting Redford-style crags someday—where it wasn’t hidden by his beard. The receding hairline that was showing gray in some lights. But it was still Duncan, and he was still good-looking. His mother was right; had we had children, our kids would have had red hair and they would have been gorgeous.

It wasn’t the signs of aging that made him change for me. He wasn’t so much different from when we were together, and that was the problem. In fact, it suddenly occurred to me that he was even more like the old Duncan than I could have believed possible, and that was because he wanted something from me. I recognized that now, for what it was. Sure, everyone wants something from the one they love, even if it’s just plain old desire. But with Duncan, it was all that and something else as well. I had something he wanted.

A million years ago, maybe it had been sex or a study partner or maybe, and I was going to admit it to myself for the first time, maybe it was Oscar and what Duncan believed a connection with Oscar would do for him. Maybe he genuinely loved me and just was too chicken to commit to an adult relationship, as he claimed. Even if he had, I now knew that eventually he would have come to believe that he could do better, for whatever reason, because for Duncan, there was no end. There wasn’t a place that he could choose to say, okay, this is what I want, how can I make it better, how can I share it, how can I take a rest? For Duncan, there would al
ways be another goal, one more hill to climb, and then he would receive the ultimate prize.

Only there was no grand prize, not as he imagined it. And even if there had been, he wouldn’t have been happy with it.

I saw in him something of what I had been attracted to all those years ago, a lifetime ago. I saw the ambition and the brains and the charisma, and they were still appealing. I also saw how much of that was attractive because it mirrored what I was like in those days, when life was merely a set of hurdles to sail over, and obstacles were simple problems that could be removed by dint of hard work, enthusiasm, determination, and bravura.

Those were still useful attributes, but they weren’t the only ones. These days, I found that I tired out quicker, and so found other ways instead of brute strength, instead of bashing my head against the wall of accomplishing my goals. I let Brian help, I compromised, I changed my mind, changed my goals, when they weren’t enough to justify their pursuit, because life is too short to waste time. I learned that life is not a zero-sum game, that just because someone else got something, it didn’t mean that I had lost something. I learned that I wasn’t even the most important thing in the world, though I made a hell of a lot more difference to those around me if I took care of myself as if I was. Compromise has all sorts of cheap, tacky connotations. If, however, one thought of it more as finding a scenario where everyone could win most of their objectives and no one was miserable, then that was a pretty good thing.

“Can you help me out, Em?” he repeated.

I took a deep breath. “Not the way you want. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I am too.” His words were heavy with sarcasm. “So much for acting like adults.”

I laughed. “Get out of here, Duncan.”

“Don’t worry.” He reached for the handle of the door. “Oh, by the way, I need to pass something along to you.”

“Oh?” I waited, figuring he was going to lay some heavy riposte on me, some big exit line. I could live with it, if he needed to cover his ego.

“Billy Griggs says hello.”

He hadn’t even moved the door open another inch before I was on him. I slammed the door shut, and before Duncan knew what was happening, I’d shoved him as hard as I could against the opposite wall.

“Billy Griggs? What the fuck do you mean by that? You have no business—none—even
thinking
about
anything
to do with—”

“Holy shit, Emma!” Duncan was scared. He tried to move along the wall, away from me, but I blocked his way with my elbow, sticking my finger in his face. There was no way he was going anywhere, as far as I was concerned. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You tell me! What the hell do you know about Billy Griggs, and what makes you think you have any right to mention him to me?”

“Goddamn it, Emma, I met him out in Chicago, last year. This guy came up to me in one of the bars outside the hotel where a couple of us historical types were hanging out. He said he knew you, wanted me to say hello, that’s all.” Duncan didn’t make any effort to get away from me; he seemed too afraid to try.

“Don’t lie to me, Duncan! Billy Griggs is
dead
! I watched his murder, years ago, back at Penitence Point. Billy is
dead
.”

Duncan looked shaken by my violent response. “Well, then, maybe I’ve got the wrong guy. He was older, maybe in his early sixties? Dark hair, clean shaven. Weather-beaten, been in the field a while, I figured, but well dressed.”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound like anyone I know.” I backed off slowly. Maybe Duncan had only made a horrible mistake. If it was a practical joke, an attempt to get under
my skin, he’d be very, very sorry he’d ever tried. “And you’re sure that was the name he gave you?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. He came up to me at the bar, asked if I was Duncan Thayer. When I said yes, he said he was glad he caught me, said that we’d met years ago and he asked after you. I was surprised, because that…was a long time ago. Said he’d been hoping you’d be at that conference, that he’d have a chance to run into you. Then he said, ‘Do me a favor, tell Emma Billy Griggs sends his regards, and that I’ll catch up with her some time next year. Next time I’m in Massachusetts.’”

A horrible icy knot began to form at the pit of my stomach. “What did he sound like? Did he have an accent?”

“I dunno, kinda Southern, I guess. I couldn’t tell where from.”

Dear God. “Duncan, are you sure you’re telling me everything?”

“Yeah, positive.” He looked at me and swallowed, another old habit he had when he was scared and not going to admit it. “Emma, what’s this about?”

I started to shake, my head aching like it was in a vise. I stepped away from him.

It had to be Tony Markham. It was just sick enough. Maybe he’d dyed his hair…and as a former colleague of mine, a Mesoamericanist, the historical archaeologists wouldn’t be so likely to recognize him. The authorities had said he must be dead, but I never believed this, not the way he looked when he killed Billy Griggs while I watched—he was just too evil to let a little thing like a hurricane get him…

“Emma, what’s your damage?”

I shook my head, trying to think of something logical to say, something that would make this all go away. Finally, I sat down. It had to be Tony.

“Emma?”

“Just something I thought was over with. Don’t worry about it, Duncan. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but it has nothing to do with you.”

It couldn’t be, I thought. Christ, it never ends, nothing ever ends, can’t I ever be done with something? What was it that Faulkner said? The past is never dead; it’s not even past.