The Skeleton's Knee (43 page)

From the sounds, I could tell he was leaving the gallery we’d entered open for his approach, so I retraced our steps, speaking as we went. “You need to hide in this passageway—behind the puppets, in case he has a flashlight. Let him pass by, and then run for help. Police should be here soon, but they won’t know where to look.”

It was too dark to read her expression, but I could feel her eyes upon me as she weighed my trust in her against her well-honed instincts for self-preservation.

I gave her shoulder a squeeze, hoping I hadn’t just staked my life on foolish sentiment. “Good luck.” In the dark, I felt her hand touch mine for an instant, and then she was gone.

The shooter had almost finished his handiwork, rearranging the tall, heavy counters in the gift shop in front of the other passageways. The last of his noise allowed Susan to hide herself somewhere down the passage. I waited in the narrow connector to the middle passage, peering around the corner.

The gunman did have a flashlight, held well away from his body so it couldn’t be used as a reliable target in the dark, and he kept switching it on and off to further camouflage his location. Anticipating my scheme, he didn’t proceed slowly and quietly as before, but began ricocheting from side to side, knocking over puppets and props as he went, ensuring that no one would be left hiding in his wake. His progress was now startlingly fast, brutal, and effective.

I had no idea where Susan had hidden herself, or how well. I only hoped that he would miss her in his own attempts to avoid becoming a target. But I also didn’t know how well her nerves would hold up. To remain utterly silent and still, inches away from someone intent on killing you, was a bit much to expect.

Reluctantly, knowing I was reducing whatever plan I might have had to a roll of the dice, I pulled my gun from its holster and aimed at the ceiling above the flickering flashlight. I knew I couldn’t hit him with such a shot, but I also wouldn’t hit Susan by accident.

I pulled the trigger and dove to the side, out of sight. The responding shot was almost instantaneous, slapping into the wooden wall behind where I’d been standing.

I froze for a moment, not knowing if my opponent would stop to take stock or charge to take me off guard. He chose the cautious route, keeping his light off and his movements to a minimum. I felt comfortable now that as long as she stayed put a while longer, Susan could make it to safety.

The light flickered again for a split second as the shooter got his bearings. I retreated farther back into the third gallery and began looking for a good hiding place. I’d done what I could for Susan; now I had to find a way to survive.

The third gallery, like the others, was lined with puppets set in scenes. Moving as quickly as possible, I made my way down its length, to get a feel for the territory. At the far end, there was a grouping of figures dressed in costumes, one of which felt, to my blindly groping fingers, like knitted material. I pulled out my pocketknife again, sliced into the fabric, and pulled at its strands. As I’d hoped, it began to unravel, creating a long, thin string. I tied one end to one of the puppets and retreated with the other back up the gallery, hiding as best I could amid a cluster of figures draped in sheets.

Now it came down to patience, time, and luck. The crowd outside had to be breaking up by now, walking to their cars; the performers were no doubt converging on the house next door to clean up and get ready to head home. The man stalking me knew that. It had occurred to me that perhaps the best way out of my predicament was simply to empty my gun into the floor. But by now, I wanted him as badly as he apparently wanted me.

I stayed against the wall for what seemed like hours, my gun in one hand, the piece of yarn in the other. The gunman had reverted to his earlier technique, where his progress became indistinguishable from the shadows around him. I had no idea which gallery he was prowling, or even, for that matter, if he hadn’t already passed me. I had planned to let him do just that, pulling the string to distract him, thereby getting the drop on him. But that had all depended on knowing where he was. I began to sweat in the total blackness, covered by dusty sheets, my body sore and cramped.

Suddenly, I heard two sounds: one distant, from near the building’s front door; the other far more important to me—a barely perceptible startled intake of breath, not six feet beyond me.

I was about to pull the string in my hand when the blackness around me disappeared in a stunning, blinding brilliance. The barn’s lights had been switched on.

Blinking rapidly, shading my eyes with the hand that had held the now-superfluous piece of yarn, I stepped from my hiding place to face the man who had killed Bob Shattuck.

He was halfway down the passage, his right side to me, similarly surprised but already twisting to get off a shot, when I saw Al Hammond’s face appear beyond him, above the tall counter that had been pushed up against the entrance. He was staring down the sights of a Winchester pump shotgun.

Simultaneously, we both yelled, “Freeze.”

And miraculously, fighting his own momentum with instincts worthy of a cat, the man froze in a half-crouch, his gun almost bearing on my chest.

“Drop it.” There was the hint of a smile then, the man opened his hand, and the gun fell to the floor with a dull clatter.

· · ·

Outside, ten minutes later, with the side of the old barn flickering in the blue lights of four state police cruisers, I watched as the gunman, handcuffed but outwardly unconcerned, was helped into the back of one of the cars.

A state trooper—the sergeant in command—paused in his interview of me to watch the car drive off. “Cold-blooded son of a bitch, isn’t he?”

I nodded. “How did you know to look in the barn?”

“Some woman came running up as we were checking the crowd, said she’d heard gunshots.”

“She still here?”

“I asked her to stay put, but one of my men just told me she took off. Probably didn’t want to get all tangled up in this.”

I took a deep breath of the fresh night air, wondering where Susan Pendergast was headed now and what would become of her. She was certainly no saint, but if the world let her keep her secrets, she still had much to offer. I knew I’d do my part—she’d gained my respect and my vote for another chance. I’d drop the investigation where it was and let Brandt sort out the public relations.

Unfortunately, Susan would never know that for sure, any more than she’d know whether Bonatto now considered the slate clean or still wanted her dead.

It made me wonder how much longer she’d keep paying the price of freedom, and whether, someday, she’d ever question the value of all her efforts. I hoped, for her sake and for those who stood to benefit from her talents, that she’d keep on fighting.

“I don’t know, Sergeant. Maybe she thought she’d done the best she could.”

Now available as an e-book, Archer Mayor’s
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
is the fifth Joe Gunther novel.

WHAT I REMEMBER
comes to me in private mental snapshots—some slightly fuzzy or badly framed, some of people, others of ceilings, ambulance roofs, or views of the sky. All of them are in random order. The one constant theme, like music accompanying a slide show, is the pain. It is the pain, I’ve come to think, that stimulated my taking the snapshots in the first place. Whenever it hit badly enough, I came into focus, more or less, just as a dozing concertgoer might be jarred awake by an occasional off-key note, before nodding off once more.

There are many clear, full face, but troubled portraits of friends—Tony, Ron, Sammie, Gail, Billy… Even my younger brother Leo, a butcher from Thetford and the gentle custodian of the remnants of my family. All there, I knew, to lend me comfort, to see how I’m doing, but all looking as if they’ve lost their best friend. There is one of Willy, of course, that’s a little different. He’s farther away, standing straight and viewing from a distance. When I wasn’t taking photos but just leafing through them until the next spasm woke me up—I came to think he was looking at me as he might a dead dog in the street. But then he’s a special case; and he did show up.

Toward the end, more lucid, although still keeping to myself in dark unconsciousness, I knew that’s what was going on—that they were visiting me—fitting themselves awkwardly in between the IV poles, the electronic monitors, the EKG machine, and a bunch of other equipment that kept a steady watch on me. But having no memory of their visits apart from these disjointed images—and judging solely from their expressions—I knew I wasn’t doing too well.

I eventually found that out for myself when the familiar painful stimulus led to a moving picture instead of a still. I watched in grimacing fascination as a young nurse, her eyes watchful, manipulated something below my line of sight. It was dark all around us, the only light coming from a freestanding gooseneck lamp she had beside her, and the familiar green, red, and amber glow from the various instruments plugged in all around me.

“Ow.”

She stopped, and turned to look at me, her face darkening in the shadow, which in turn highlighted the whiteness of her teeth as she smiled. “Good morning.”

I moved my head slightly to take in the surrounding gloom. “Morning?”

“Figure of speech. It’s 2:00 a.m. How are you feeling?” Her voice was soft and clear.

“Not too good. What are you doing down there?” To me, my voice sounded like it was coming from inside an echo chamber and my throat hurt like hell. I didn’t know if I was whispering or shouting.

“Changing your dressing. Sorry if it hurts a bit.”

I caught my breath at an extra jolt, remembering how painlessly the knife had slipped in. “He did a hell of a job, I guess.”

She smiled again, her eyes back on what she was doing. “That he did. He said lots of other people would’ve died from less. You’re a tough guy, Mr. Gunther.”

She hadn’t known whom I’d meant, and I was too tired to explain it to her. Also, there was something uplifting in the way she spoke, after all those grim-faced snapshots, and I didn’t want to ruin the mood. I passed out instead, launched on a new career of collecting movie loops—small segments of action, usually of nurses like her, sometimes of doctors—always brought on by the pain. Some of these loops had dialog, occasionally as coherent and reasonable as that first one, but they tended to be a little repetitive. The time of day and concern for how I was feeling were two popular subjects. And there were other times when the movie and the soundtrack were completely out of whack, when lips moved without sound and words floated by out of context. I got more of those grim looks at those times, and eventually, like a precocious toddler, I learned to keep my mouth shut when the audience frowned.

A breakthrough came when I woke not from pain, but from a gentle pressure on my forehead—something warm and smooth—a caress—and I opened my eyes to see Gail looking down at me.

“Smile,” I asked her.

She smiled—genuinely—the pleasure reaching the small crinkles near her eyes. “Hi. You’re looking better.”

I waited for the pain, for the lights to fade and the movie to end as usual—some of them had been that short—but nothing happened. I took advantage of it to study her more closely, in the flesh, instead of in the recesses of my mind. She didn’t look better. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair tangled and unwashed, and her cheeks gaunt and shadowed with exhaustion.

“You look terrible.”

The smile spread to a chuckle. “Thanks a lot—you’re to blame for most of it.”

I felt a familiar tug on my ability to focus—my brain longing to return to its black hole of peaceful contemplation. My sight darkened and blurred. But I didn’t want to go this time. I shifted my weight slightly, and the hot poker did the rest—my eyes cleared and my mind resurfaced.

That obviously wasn’t all it did, however. Gail suddenly leaned forward, her expression intent. “Are you okay?”

I unclenched my teeth. “Yeah—sorry.” I raised an arm to touch her, to set her at ease, and saw a thin, almost bony hand come into view—pale, slightly wrinkled, and scarred by several old IV sites along the forearm. Instead of squeezing her shoulder, I flexed my hand several times, as if at a loss to explain its function.

She interpreted the gesture. “You’ve been here a long time, Joe. Weeks. You came close to dying a few times.”

Her tightly controlled voice suddenly meshed with her ravaged appearance and I felt terrible about my earlier flip comment. I put the stranger’s hand to use and gripped her arm. “Gail, I thought about you—about being with you—just after he stabbed me.”

She smiled again. “Swell.”

I held onto her harder. “No. It was strange. It was peaceful, and didn’t hurt. I was just lying there in the water, thinking of how nice it would be to be with you. You were the one thing I could think of that helped.”

The words sounded awkward to me, unfamiliar and slightly juvenile. I was angered at my own lack of eloquence, knowing without being told of the hours she must have spent by my bed, putting aside her own pain so she could accompany me through mine.

“I guess it worked,” was what she said, but the smile lingered in her eyes.

I wanted to ask her how she was doing, if her own suffering at the hand of our mutual nemesis had eased any since we’d last visited. I wanted to find out what had happened to Bob Vogel, and what her reaction was to that. But it was all beyond me. My vision closed in again, I saw my hand fall away from her arm, and this time I couldn’t bring myself to move. Just as I shut down, I saw Gail lean forward to kiss me.

The next visitor I knew about was Leo, my brother, who woke me up as any truly professional butcher might—by getting a firm grip on the meat of my upper arm.

He smiled as I opened my eyes. “Jesus, Joey, you’re scrawnier’n hell.”

I focused on his tired face—broader and darker than Gail’s. “You don’t look so hot yourself,” I croaked, clearing my throat.

He slipped his arm behind my neck and tilted my head up to receive some cool water from a cup with a bent straw hanging out of it—his years of tending our invalid mother showing in his gentle dexterity. “I knew you’d want some of this—all that crap they had stuffed down your throat. I couldn’t believe it.”