Sorrow's Crown (28 page)

Anna said, "There is no need for this."

"Quiet, you foolish, nosy old woman."

From the doorway came, "
Fuckit
."

Jocelyn drew back out of my range before she would even turn her head. Then she glared at the woman. Neither she nor
Harnes
showed any change of composure.
Harnes
said, "Li Tai." I finally knew what to call the woman. Her mouth fell open for a second and then she closed it. Jocelyn said something to her in Chinese. They began a slow chattering that rapidly built to a singsong quarrel.
Harnes
put in a few words himself, and they all fell silent.

"Jocelyn is your daughter," Anna said.

"Yes,"
Harnes
admitted.

"And you had her mother confined to a mental institution? Why?"

"I did not want her in my life any longer and she threatened to cause a stir with Chinese officials. She managed several of my factories overseas, and had a great many political affiliations in Hong Kong. This course proved to be most beneficial for me."

"So long as you had her you could control these politicians."

"No, money did that, until Hong Kong reverted back to mainland China's rule. Then it became more advantageous to simply leave."

Anna's lips flattened and went white until she found the air to say, "That was nearly two years ago. Why not release her?"

He looked mildly amused. "And why should I?"

I made eye contact with Nick
Crummler
but couldn't read anything. Jocelyn hadn't pointed the gun at him at all, I'd noticed.
Harnes
sat, crossed his legs, and straightened the seam of his pants leg.

I said, "You returned from Asia two years ago and left her imprisoned that long for no reason?"

"No, it has been over twelve years." he confessed with the cool alacrity I wanted to set fire to. "I brought her from Hong Kong under the auspices of visiting Disneyland long before my son and I stopped traveling the world and settled back in America."

At the word
Disneyland
Li Tai squeezed her eyes shut and one massive shiver ran through her body.

"And Teddy didn't know."

"He believed her to be dead. My son was. . . a benevolent soul. He would not have understood."

"It was stupid of you to bring her here," Jocelyn hissed at me. "What could you possibly have hoped to accomplish?"

"This." I unfolded Teddy's sketches and showed them to
Harnes
. "You didn't know that Teddy volunteered at the hospital, did you? He drew murals in the group therapy rooms. He must've spotted Li Tai there several weeks ago. She was your wife in China, wasn't she? He'd been raised by her."

"For some years, yes."

I turned to Jocelyn, watching all that had laid coiled and under control for so long rising and struggling to get free. I shoved my chest against the gun, hoping it would make her feel empowered enough not to pull the trigger.

"A woman he hardly remembered, and believed to be dead. He came to you, didn't he? He finally realized the kind of man his father was, and he came to you, hoping you'd side with him. How he must have loved you to have trusted you. His sister. He thought you hadn't known your own mother was still alive. But you did know. And you didn't care. That's what
Crummler
saw that day he came out into the hailstorm. He saw you two arguing. He knew what you were capable of. You terrified him."

"Shut up about that brain-damaged caretaker. He means nothing," she said. "Teddy never understood the man our father was. If he had, he would not have acted so intolerably."

"What did he want to do? Go to the police? Try to get your mother out on his own? He chose to talk with you alone while he visited his own mother. He must've gone to the cemetery every day for a while. He respected the dead."

"He did not respect father."

"And you'd do anything to protect your father," I said. "So you murdered Teddy."

Harnes
cocked his head and said, "What?"

"Father . . ."

"What?"

"Farther, it had to be done."

"You? You . . . killed my son?"
Harnes
said. His voice seemed to come from someplace other than his throat—perhaps Jocelyn still had his breath, or maybe I did—so that he was only a man mouthing silently in a vacuum. He still showed no emotion, other than the slight hint of confusion. "You did this?"

I saw the dragon emerging in Jocelyn's eyes, and stared in lost captivation as it began to overcome her—the lizard beneath the beauty, cold and primordial, jealous and savage.

"Once Teddy was dead you became even more brazen," I said. "You approached Shanks to handle Frost. Your rage was showing." In fact, it started to show again in her loveliness, the shadows moving in her features, and I had trouble speaking and watching at the same time. "Why his face? Why did you cut off his face with
Crummler's
shovel? Because you saw too much of yourself in it?"
Yes, yes, look at her
. "Teddy didn't turn against his father. You did."

"Father," she said. The word held such extreme importance for her that she seemed to be saying prayers and making sacrifices upon an altar. "He'd betrayed you. It could not be permitted."

"You did this?"

Jocelyn flicked her wrist casually toward me and I knew the black night she had wrapped inside of would all come rushing out in this moment. I dodged toward
Harnes
hoping she wouldn't fire if I was too close to him. The shot sounded impossibly loud and Anna lurched sideways, rising slightly—it seemed as if she might actually be standing, about to take a step toward me. I reached and she flopped into my arms, and said, "Oh, dear."

I found my grandmother's blood on my hands and the world grew tight and too painfully well lit. I closed my eyes and opened them again.

Jocelyn twisted and pointed the gun at me. I wheeled blindly and flung myself aside as she fired. Nick
Crummler
backpedaled and hurled himself at Li Tai as Jocelyn straightened her arm and aimed at her mother. She fired twice more before I dove onto her. We dropped to the floor heavily and rolled into the darkest corner, where we belonged now. Shadows tore at us. Her facade fell in on itself and her nostrils flared, and I saw all the welts of her strange soul rise to the flesh. I watched her became a hideous caricature of beauty, her face haggard and deeply fissured, nose drawn into a snarl and lips skinned back in a sneer. She tumbled against me, desiccated, more terminal than the dead chauffeur.

Everything stilled. I knew my face looked the same as hers. She fired again. I felt warmth slithering out of me. I reached down and grabbed Jocelyn's wrist and brutally pulled it backward, wanting and needing to hear the bone snap. She easily squirmed from my grip and brought the heel of her palm up viciously into my jaw. More blood spurted, but I didn't mind the dragon's bite now. It felt too good letting loose my own beast.

Nick
Crummler
rose and punched
Harnes
once in the mouth, and the madman who had poisoned his wives and imprisoned the mother of his own insane child slid to the floor where he stared at me. I pulled my fist back and drove it forward into Jocelyn's stomach, and still she sneered at me. She smashed me in the mouth once more and I slugged her on the chin as hard as I could.

A soft sound faded in.

A second later I heard it again, and once more, much sharper, and knew it as my name.

"Jonathan. I'm all right. I'm all right, dear. Stop it, you'll kill her!"

I got my hand around Jocelyn's neck and squeezed as tightly as I could, not caring where the next minute took me so long as it took me away from here, but before I got there she was suddenly gone, yanked backward by her long hair into
Harnes
' lap. He reached for the wine glass, broke it against the edge of the table, and tried to slice her throat open with the shard of the shattered stem. He wasn't angry, not even while he calmly tried to hook her jugular. "You killed my son. My son."

Nick punched him in the mouth again, took the broken glass out of his hand, and looked around the room.

For a man who had been a denizen of
Panecraft
and lived inside a cardboard box, eating garbage in the street, he sounded damn sure of himself.

He said, "All of you are crazy."

I knelt beside by grandmother. The bullet had passed through the thick folds and layers of clothing near her neck. The heavy sweater had scorch marks on it, and her hair had been slightly singed. I tore the tiny rip open wider to get a better look, and vaguely wondered why I was using my left hand instead of my right. The ridge of her shoulder had an inch-long crease that had mostly crusted, yet still dribbled a little blood.

"I'm fine, dear, I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"No, look," she said. "It has already stopped. Let me attend to you."

"Me?"

I stared down at myself and saw my right hand still opened into a claw as though waiting for Jocelyn to press her throat back into it. My arm dangled oddly and was entirely drenched with blood.

"Jesus," I said. "I don't feel it."

"Jonathan, you're in shock."

"That's pretty helpful."

"We've got to staunch the wound." She stretched like she would hug me or pull me down onto her lap. Instead, she lifted my jacket and
untucked
my shirt. "You're not wearing a belt."

"So I put on a little weight. I think you're supposed to tear the hem of your skirt at a time like this."

"Perhaps if I was your love interest and we were fleeing
mafiosi
."

My arm kept leaking. I shook free of my jacket and Anna yanked out the lining, making a tourniquet. It wasn't until she said, "There," that I started feeling woozy.

Lowell hadn't used his siren. Like Nick
Crummler
, he simply appeared in the room, his gun drawn but pressed down tightly to the side of his leg.

I hadn't realized Nick was even still in the house. He looked over his shoulder at Lowell and muttered, "Oh hell."

Lowell took it all in, stood beside me, and said, "Your phone ain't worth shit."

"I've begun to realize that."

"Ambulance is on its way."

Harnes
and Jocelyn lay unconscious on the floor, tangled in the dark corner that reminded me of the tapered lighting effect of
Crummler's
cell. Li Tai sat in the center of the room, her hands folded in her lap, showing no emotion besides a ruddy glow of vindication lighting her visage. Nick and Lowell eyed each other very carefully.

"This is Nick, huh?" Lowell asked without really asking. I nodded. "Think you can explain this all to me in less than an hour, Jonny?"

I thought it would take a month to clear it up, but the short form only took ten minutes.

"Who killed the guy out in the limo?"

"Maybe cancer, or maybe
Harnes
poisoned him.”

“Why?"

"He's a psychopath."

"Christ, we're going to have Wallace exhuming bodies for weeks."

Nick
Crummler
scratched at his beard and said, "Well, now that we all know my brother is innocent, I guess I'll be going."

"You killed a man," Lowell said.

"Whatever he was, he was less than a man. If you'd seen him in action you'd understand that and would've done it yourself. I saved the kid's life."

Lowell was actually three months younger than me. He nodded and said, "I know, but you realize I can't just let you leave."

"I have to admit I was hoping."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me a bothersome time here."

Nick cocked his head, considering it. "I understand your situation, Deputy Tully. But if I get taken in there're a lot of reasons a man like me can get put away for good that have nothing to do with what I'm arrested for." He pointed at
Harnes
, but Lowell didn't turn his head. "It's happened before, and I wound up in that asylum under the care of a bastard who liked to wear steel-toed boots to crack ribs and sap somebody three times a day for the fun of it." He smoothed his beard again. "I'm sorry, I can't go with you."

"I wasn't actually asking," Lowell said.

"No, I figured you weren't."

I'd helped to put an innocent man inside the perverted corridors of
Panecraft
, and had been forced to watch him slowly dying in sorrow because I hadn't had enough faith in him to help out when I should have.

Shit.

Anna knew what was coming and said, "Oh, Lord."

I spun and caught Lowell in the stomach with my left. It was like smashing my knuckles into a marble statue. He looked more startled than hurt, but dropped back a few steps with his mouth open and raising the gun. Nick had already vanished. Lowell let out a short bark of disgust, his bunched muscles shifted beneath his uniform, and I wondered if I should shut my eyes or take it like a man. I shut my eyes. He hit me only twice, but it hurt worse than when Sparky had kicked the crap out of me all over the place. I went to my knees trying to suck wind and retch at the same time. It was like that for a minute, and then my mind whirled pleasantly for a moment and I felt warm and comfortable. I screamed from the bottom of my nuts when he jerked my wounded right arm, snapped the cuffs on me and dragged me across the yard and threw me into the back of his parked police car without a word. I sat staring over at the dead chauffeur's head lolling against his steering wheel until the ambulance and other police arrived. Lowell took me to jail without a word.