The Summer Bones (35 page)

“Ronald, I suppose.”

“Ronald.” He closed his eyes, took in a breath and exhaled.

“Oh my God,” Gail said slowly. “Ronald.”

When Ronald came back, he had a gun. Victoria propped herself against the wall, knees bent, arms braced for support. The dizziness had given way to an appalling headache and every movement brought twinges of pain. It was full daylight now, blocks of sunshine branding the studio floor.

She stared at the black weapon in her brother-in-law's hand and didn't look at his damaged face. The barrel wobbled obscenely, almost as if it were waving hello. Emily's gun, she recalled from her search of the bathroom near their bedroom. How ironic that he would kill her with her dead sister's gun. The resignation of what would come seeped into her bones like rain on parched soil.

“Now, tell me about Emily. Who was it? Who did it?”

“I can't.” It was a faint refusal. The gun, his sniffling and unsteadiness, made her throat go dry. It would be insanity to murder her in his home; but it was insanity to hold her captive. It was insanity that made him kill his wife and then spend time agonizing over the identity of her lover. It was hard to tell just what kind of drugs he might be on.

“Tell me.” His knuckles looked raw, as if he'd chewed on them. One finger curled menacingly around the trigger. His whole hand shook badly.

“So you can kill him?”

“Yes.” Ronald coughed. The gun jerked up and down before her fascinated gaze. “If it wasn't Damon, then what do you care?”

“Isn't it enough that you killed Em?”

Harsh breathing filled the lovely, light room. Ronald said hoarsely, “Don't be stupid, Vicky.”

Her body felt light, floating almost, as if he'd already pulled the trigger and sent her into oblivion. The peal of the doorbell came, once again, as the voice of a savior.

The gun wavered in annoyance. Ronald's choppy breathing filled the room. He sniffled loudly. “What the hell?”

Whoever wanted to see Ronald wasn't interested in waiting. The bell rolled again, insistently, and again.

Victoria closed her eyes, but the image of the gun hung there, stark in black and gray behind her eyelids. Whoever was downstairs leaned on the bell. The frantic fever of urgency came through clearly when the person began to pound on the door.

“Fuck,” Ronald muttered crudely. He wiped his hand carelessly across his mouth. “If that's your mother again—”

Victoria heard his sloppy exit from the room with relief that soaked into her muscles like medication. What she didn't hear was the click of the lock.

She opened her eyes.

Sure enough, the door was actually ajar. Like a bird in a cage, she just sat there for a long moment, fearful of the invitation, the implicit risk in going toward that open door.

Her muscles unlocked all at once. She shifted position, going to her hands and knees, crawling across the floor in an ungainly fashion with her bruised shoulder. Her mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, the drink she'd asked for never having become a reality.
Please,
the prayer was sent, spinning upward,
please, please.

The hallway was long, light, and airless because of the closed doors and windows. She found the wall with her good hand, bracing herself as she stood up, swallowing the faintness. Her shoulder was beating in time with her heart. Her face felt stiff and cracked with dried blood.

It was difficult to walk, each step a matter of concentration. From downstairs she could hear raised voices. Her left sandal was broken, flapping fretfully as she lifted her foot to take her further down the hallway toward freedom.

Freedom.

* * * *

Damon had driven to Ronald and Emily's house with hands that shook like a palsied drunkard's. Gail had been dialing the police when he ran out the door, her face and trembling hands expressing her fear of the worst.

The worst.
He wouldn't—he couldn't—think of it.
Not even fate could be so cruel as to finally give me Victoria only to take her away the next day.

Or could it?

His mind was spinning with confusion in which Emily's death and Victoria's disappearance jumbled together into a soup of suspicion and turmoil. The facts jumped at and contradicted each other—Ronald, the bereaved; Ronald, the jealous fool; Ronald, the murderer. Damon could see him killing Emily in a passionate moment of anger, but he couldn't see him hurting Victoria.

Of course, he dabbled in cocaine and drank too much. Intoxication could dull judgment, suspend all sense of right and wrong. Standing on the walk, Damon pounded on the front door with his fist, the other hand working the doorbell with an urgency born of desperation. The hot sun burned like fire on his back.

The door opened so suddenly he almost fell in.

The inside of the house was cool, like autumn midnight. Dark, musty, full of dying smells. Ronald, who had wrenched the door open with a violence born of irritation, stood swaying on his feet. His face was a disaster of purple cuts and black, drying blood. Four bandages had been hung in the middle of the wreck, tying the lacerated flesh together. He was barely recognizable.

“Jesus!” Damon didn't give the other man time to say a word. He pushed past him, shoving the door wide, his mouth going dry, one foot skidding on a piece of newspaper left carelessly on the floor. Behind him, Ronald cursed and stumbled back to hit the wall.

“Where is she?” His gaze raked the room.

“Victoria?” Damon shouted her name as he ran toward the kitchen, casting about in the shuttered gloom, his voice breaking and unnaturally high.

“Paulsen … get the hell out,” Ronald snarled, lurching in the background. Damon barely heard him. The kitchen was grotesque with decaying food and reeking garbage. A black hole from a forgotten cigarette graced the wooden table. Scotch bottles sat in formation, like an army of degenerates. Victoria was not in sight.

He left the kitchen, swerving down the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time. Adrenaline shot along his veins like rocket fuel. He caught his foot on the top step, stumbled, and nearly went sprawling at the sight of Victoria leaning against the wall. Obviously hurt, covered in dried blood, but alive.

One hand came out to him, crusted dark and shaking. Her lips formed one desperate word: “No.”

* * * *

The nightmare continued unabated—a linear string of bodies and murder and rage that ended at this place. Victoria was enfolded in Damon's arms and felt nothing but paralyzing fear, much worse than when she had been alone and able to talk to Ronald—much worse. Damon held her, supported her tottering body, and she wanted to weep with dread instead of relief.

“Damon.” Her lips could not form the words fast enough. Her mouth was dry and weakness weighed like lead on every movement.

“I'm here, love.” His mouth was on her hair. Her shoulder ached mercilessly from his tight grasp.

She couldn't see anything past Damon's chest. His back, horribly, was to the stairs. She twisted, tried to break his hold, to make him feel her panic. The words just didn't come. Her mind felt so thick and useless.

“The police will be here any minute,” Damon whispered, his arms tightened, “it's all okay now.”

“No!”

“Tori, love—”

“No, oh … no!”

She could feel the impending disaster, smelling the dusty hall, seeing Damon's beautiful face bent over hers.

“Paulsen!” The word was quiet—chillingly so—just slightly slurred. Victoria heard Ronald speak, knew he was standing there at the top of the stairs with the gun in his hand. It was as if she could see it playing out in her mind, knowing beforehand with sickening certainty that Damon delivered so neatly into his hands was not something her brother-in-law could pass by.

Damon lifted his head. His body tensed so perceptibly that she knew … she knew …

Victoria clung to him. He turned to face Ronald, trying to push her behind him, but she would have none of that, fighting him, shoving her body to the front, to shield … her arms went around his neck, clinging and insistent.

Ronald held the gun carelessly, pointing it somewhere between Damon's brain and his heart. She watched, her hand twisted in Damon's shirt, her body pressed to his with a fanaticism that would not allow Ronald Sims to take away what she had waited for all her life.

“Emily,” Ronald said, endowing that word with all of the pain and blame he seemed to feel. His distorted mouth moved in slow motion.

Damon took a breath; she could hear his heart moving at a locomotive's pace. “Look, Ron, I think I know what happened to Emily—”

“Shut up.” The gun lifted, froze fractionally.

“The police will be here any second. They think you killed your wife.” Damon spoke matter-of-factly.

“Bullshit.”

“Kidnapping is almost as bad. In some states you can get the death penalty just for what you've done to Victoria.”

“So what? Emily is gone.”

“I can help you, Ron.”

“I hate your guts, Paulsen.”

“Wait … for the love of God …
listen
.”

“My wife is dead.”

The voices flowed over her head.

Victoria cringed. Damon was hurting her, trying to push her downward out of range. He had his hand on her damaged shoulder. She held on anyway, hearing the soft tear of fabric as his shirt gave under her clutching fingers. His voice went on, calmly, belying the fear she knew must exist. “Look, Ronald, she wasn't going to leave you. The pregnancy was a mistake; she never intended it, just a fling. You know how Emily was. Impulsive. She regretted it, I'm sure. Didn't want to hurt you.”

Ronald mumbled something. Victoria didn't hear it. She felt suspended in time. The whole world was unreal.

Damon went on talking, his tone low and soothing, his words spilling incoherently over her consciousness.

“At the farm … it was accidental … the police will accept it. I really think I could prove it.”

“No. Fuck you, Paulsen.”

“Listen to me. You're in trouble here, don't be a fool. It doesn't have to be like this.”

“I was already a fool.”

“If we tell them what we think happened, they can investigate and find out the truth.”

“I don't care.”

The single static burst of a portable radio signaled the arrival of the police—no sirens, no bullhorns. Victoria heard it with a relief that did not reach to her bones. Ronald was still there, the gun was still there, and the police might only have to pick up the pieces and fill out the reports.

She could feel Damon—hear his whole and healthy heart making a wonderful sound against her ear. His smell filled her nostrils. Her cheek pressed into his shirt.

Ronald had left the front door open. She could hear the sound of voices, the scrape of feet in the entry hall. A voice called out, asking if anyone was at home.

No answer.

None of them spoke.

It was a grotesque moment of waiting for Ronald to make up his mind. Damon seemed to have run out of reassurances.

“Sir?” Came a shout from below. “Turn around please. You, at the top of the stairs, turn around.”

Ronald didn't seem to understand the disembodied command.

Damon spoke again then, slowly, clearly, loudly. He said, “The police are here, Ron. I can talk to them, try to help … nothing you do now will bring Emily back. Don't completely ruin your life.”

Ronald uttered a muffled curse, more like a low moan. Victoria had her eyes shut, her whole being concentrating on the beating of Damon's heart.

Two seconds later, she heard the roar of the shot and felt the corresponding response in Damon's body.

* * * *

There were swirling lights already on when Danny managed to get there. Moving patterns of color against the lovely houses, men in uniforms talking and moving around. His heart sank when he saw the ambulance parked askew in the middle of the quiet street. He got slowly out of his car and walked toward the front door. He knew now, of course, that Victoria Paulsen's car had been found in the parking lot of a business owned by Emily Sims. He knew about the broken glass doors, the blood, the frantic phone call from Gail Benedict.

They brought the stretcher out just as he gained the front walk. He stopped, stricken by the possibilities, sick at heart. Heat radiated off the sidewalk in waves. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his eyes smarting. It wasn't even noon.

He didn't want to see another dead girl. It was hard for him to picture Victoria Paulsen's pretty face dead and gray, her slender body lax and lifeless. How unfair it would be for Ronald Sims to take away both daughters.

The shrouded figure was shuffled past. Officers trailed out of the house, talking quietly, radios speaking in short bursts of static sound.

“Danny,” A dark-haired man in navy slacks and a white shirt lifted a hand. He ambled over, shoving at his sleeves. “How are you?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Damn hot, isn't it?” He squinted at the sun.

“Yes.” Danny swallowed, almost afraid to ask, to know. “What do we have here?”

“Oh, yes, you're in on this one, aren't you? I heard your name.”

“Emily Sims was found on a farm right outside of Mayville.”

“Ah.” The lieutenant put a thumb in his mouth and chewed on the nail thoughtfully. “This Ronald Sims seems to have gone over the edge. He was holding his sister-in-law prisoner and threatening to kill her. Her cousin arrived in the middle of it all and he had them both in there at gunpoint when we got here. You know, movie stuff.”

“And?” Danny made a small gesture at the ambulance. The driver had started the engine. The back doors were slammed shut on the grisly contents.

“Dead.”

Danny stared. “Both of them?”

“Not them.” The lieutenant removed his thumb and studied it. “Sims.”