Time Out of Mind (93 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
a stop in front of the car Lesko had driven. Two policemen
stepped out. Both had hands over holstered guns. One drew
his weapon at the sound of Ella's screams.
“
Don't get nervous.” Lesko held up a hand. ”I got ID.”
shield. “New York Detectives,” he said. “Retired last
year.”
Are you armed, Mr. Lesko?” a .tall sergeant named
Gorby asked. The second policeman, the one who'd drawn his gun, stepped past Lesko. He quickly appraised Corbin, who stood quietly, his arms around Gwen, then turned and
blinked at the old woman who was on her hands and knees,
screaming at him from some fifteen feet inside her gate.
a guy named Burke. Maybe you seen him hung up in a
tree.”
The sergeant nodded. “This man did it?” He looked at
Corbin.
“
Not exactly. I'll tell you later.”
ing woman. “That's Miss Beckwith, isn't it? What have you been doing to her?”
“
Nothing, sergeant. Not a damn thing.”
She ran on, stumbling, her ice-laden coat slapping at her
legs, tripping her. And still he came. Closer now. Suddenly
she came upon another large building, its front door lit as
bright as day. She could find safety there. They would take
her in. But for a reason she did not know, Ella turned from
that grand house and staggered toward a place where there
was darkness and great mounds of snow. The mounds had
a maze of alleys between them. She could hide. She could
escape. But the spaces had filled in too much. They trapped
her legs. They tripped her. She felt herself turning, then stumbling backward. Her arms plunged deep into the snow
behind her. And he was there. She could not rise and run
again. She could not even claw at his face because her arms
were held fast. She spat. And when she did she felt the
hard tip of his cane, though it did not hurt her, pressing at a spot between her breasts.
Nothing hurt.
She no longer even felt the cold.
”
I do not feel anything.” She was tired. She would rest.
”
I know that, Ella.”
“
You cannot keep me here, you know.”
“
Stay there, Ella. It's where you belong.”
“
No.”
“
Goodbye, Ella.”
Ella screamed.
”
I do not feel anything.”
Sergeant Gorby wrapped his emergency blanket around
her head and shoulders. He placed another over her feet.
”
I know. But you're going to be fine,” he told her.
“
You cannot keep me here, you know.”
“
An ambulance is coming, Ella. It won't be long.”
“
No.”
“
Just sit tight, Ella.”
Sergeant Gorby stood and turned toward Corbin, who
had not moved from his place between the gate columns.
His policeman's eye saw that no footsteps but his own had
crossed Ella Beckwith's property line. Looking back, he
saw the dim traces of the path the old woman had followed
from her house, and a wider flattened area no more than
ten feet across where she alone had flailed and tamped the
snow. He took two steps toward Corbin, and Ella began
screaming again. Screams so loud and long that he feared
for her heart. He turned once more to quiet her. But she
looked past him as if he did not exist. She saw only Corbin.
And when Corbin slowly turned away, the screams, im
possibly, grew all the more shrill until her vocal cords gave
way and there were only silent clouds of steam. But Ella would never stop screaming in her mind.
Epilogue
Monday was chaos. Just at daybreak, the Greenwich de
tectives came back for the second time. A New York lawyer, summoned by Sturdevant for Jonathan's sake, arrived,
chauffeur-driven, an hour before that.
As word leaked out of police headquarters concerning
the magnitude of Sunday evening's events, the press began
to arrive in force. A uniformed policeman kept most of
them at bay, but two stringers for the
New York Post
found the unlocked porch door and strolled into the kitchen while Jonathan and Gwen were making breakfast for themselves, Harry Sturdevant, and Raymond Lesko. None of them had eaten since breakfast the day before, except for some Dun
kin’ Donuts at the Greenwich police station. The two
stringers left quickly after Lesko showed his perfect teeth
and wrapped a friendly arm around each of their necks.
At nine o'clock, Gwen Leamas called the Network to
explain why neither she nor Mr. Corbin would be in the
office for a few days at least. A Network news executive
called back ten minutes later, astonished at his good luck
to have two Network staffers in the middle of a major story, and announced that he would have a live remote crew there
within the hour for an exclusive interview. There would be
no interviews, Gwen told him firmly and hung up, though she knew that her refusal would not deter these news types in the slightest.
to let him know when Dancer showed signs of regaining
that his presence at Dancer's bedside might do much to
loosen his tongue. He further suggested that a Polaroid of
Tom Burke's blackened face might also make a nice con
versation starter, but Gorby felt that Lesko's face had
enough heart attack potential as it was. He would pick up
Lesko in ten minutes.
convenient charge of threatening with a gun, had talked
freely to detectives for much of the night, ignoring the pleas
of a lawyer whom the police had called in on his behalf.
He admitted that he had seen his sister murder Tilden Beckwith in 1944 and that, although she soon made him go away to Palm Beach, he knew perfectly well that she was already
arranging the eradication of Tilden's entire blood line. An explanation of the Corbin line versus the Beckwith line, to
the extent that he fully understood it, took two hours by
itself. He would also doze when asked a question he found
difficult.
He admitted, after a fashion, that he, and Ella, and Bal
lanchine had also conspired to murder Jonathan Corbin,
Gwen Leamas, and Harry Sturdevant, and that two at
tempts, which were foiled by Mr. Lesko, had been made,
and that a third was in process when it was foiled by Tilden
Beckwith himself. It was at this point that the confession began to lose what small measure of clarity it had had. Its usefulness was further compromised, to the lawyer's relief,
by Tilden’s insistence on explaining that Jonathan was in fact Tilden and the one called Gwen Leamas was in fact
Charlotte Corbin whose name was really Margaret, all of
whom, most of whom, were, in any case, dead. Ella's
brother dozed again. When he awoke shortly, the only topic that interested him was his continuance as the chairman of
Beckwith Enterprises. The detectives promised that he
would certainly get their vote and agreed among themselves
that there was little point in continuing the interrogation until they'd spoken further with Harry Sturdevant, who seemed best able to make sense out of this.
simplified version of events. Jonathan Corbin had very
likely been drawn to Greenwich as a result of some for
gotten stories he'd heard as a child. Ella Beckwith spotted
him one day. His striking resemblance to the murdered Til
den Beckwith and her own fears did the rest. She had had
Lesko hired to find out who he was and where he came
from. When Lesko learned too much, and began to realize
that the Corbins were blood relatives of Tilden Beckwith
and all the other Beckwiths were not, and that the Chicago
Corbins had probably been murdered as well, Ella Beck
with decided to try once more for a clean sweep. There
would be no mention of Charlotte Corbin’ s ever being any
one else. If the name Margaret arose at all, it would be dismissed as a pet name, nothing more. There would cer
tainly be no mention of Corbin's hallucinations or waking dreams, whatever they were. In any event they were gone.
Just as his fear of the snow had gone. And Tilden, Jonathan
had assured Harry Sturdevant during a quiet moment late
last night, was gone as well. Jonathan had felt him go. It
was early last evening. Just before Ella Beckwith started
screaming.
lawyer advised him, that Jonathan Corbin could be charged with a felony. True, there seemed to be ample evidence that
this Tom Burke entered Corbin's property with violent in
tent and that Corbin defended himself. But hanging the man
in the crook of a tree with his own scarf after he was dis
armed and disabled could be regarded as excessive force
under the law.
“
Horseshit,” said Lesko on returning from Greenwich
Hospital. “I would have made sure his clock was stopped
myself if I knew there was still another guy with a gun on
the other side of the house. This is the only town where
they'd think about indicting a guy not for what he did but
because he did it untidy.”
”
I assume Mr. Ballanchine confessed to his role in this.”
Dancer?” Lesko shook his head. “Guys like him don't confess. They try to deal. He's not awake ten minutes be
fore he's trying to give away the store in return for im
munity on the conspiracy and attempted-murder raps. He
wants me to come back and see him alone, but he's got
nothing to sell. The cops got his gun, they got that crazy
old man's testimony, and they got mine. If they get around
to searching Dancer's office they'll probably find a recording of him offering me fifteen grand to knock off Corbin.” Lesko almost patted his chest again for emphasis. He'd re
trieved the money from Dancer's pocket when he found
him on the porch. Last time he patted his chest it got him twelve stitches plus a ride in an icebox. Lesko figured he'd earned it.
“
Did he say anything about...” Sturdevant hesitated.
“About what happened to him?”
Lesko nodded. “The guy who bashed him talked to him
first. He says it wasn't Corbin. He changed his mind later,
but that's where he started.”
“
It was Tilden?”
Lesko shrugged.
“
What do you think, Mr. Lesko?”
”
I don't think anything. If you think I'm going to go
around saying I believe in ghosts, you're crazier than old lady Beckwith.”
”
I don't suppose you'd make an exception, just between
us.”
The ex-cop shrugged again. After a thoughtful pause, he
shook his head firmly.
“
But you've already acknowledged,” Sturdevant per
sisted, “that it was a very different person who helped you
out of that car and who then walked over to Ella Beckwith’ s
house. And once he was there, you and Gwen both saw
him change right before your eyes.”
