Final Grave (34 page)

A cartoonish smile crossed his lips in mock compassion. “She can’t chance that.”

Harold glanced at his bleeding side. His eyes bled too, with fear. Or was it hatred? Birdie had suffered his old pal’s ineptitude for the last time. The scraggly loser never understood the beauty of death, the skill of preservation.

“Pitiful, chicken-hearted fool,” Birdie said, as he wrapped the frayed bungee cords around Harold’s wrists and secured his feet. “All your brain power and you couldn’t save Joanna. Or Meri Ann. All your waiting and watching at Becky’s. Did you really think I’d be stupid enough to break into that house, take her there?” He laughed. “But you were never a real hunter, not like your father. Now there was a man. He should have been my father.”

“He… he treated you like a son.”

Jason grew thoughtful for a moment, stroking his cheek. “My own father wasted his life, a lackey with a hammer and saw, albeit a well-paid one. But your father, he taught me everything I wanted to know. Too bad you didn’t listen. Dear foolish Harold, you can’t even save yourself.”

A door latch clicked open behind him.

Birdie started to turn. But a sharp blow struck him in the back. He gasped from the pain and fell to his knees, like a dog on all fours. Then another blow; this one bludgeoned his kidney. His face, chest and belly collapsed onto the floor. He struggled for a momentary glimpse of her.

Her eyes were ice, her jaw concrete. Then her foot came down hard on his back. He had underestimated her strength. He lay motionless. “Ah, Meri Ann,” he said.

“Jason,” she said in a guttural growl. “You worthless scum!”

He coughed, struggling to catch his breath. “You’re a bit too soon.”

# # #

She held the Smith & Wesson at the base of his skull, her foot hard against his backbone. It took everything inside her not to blow off the back of his head. Her heart pounded in her ears, making it hard to take stock of the situation.

Harold Graber was bound to the chair nearest the front window. He was bleeding, his shotgun propped in his lap—his little persuader finished persuading. His breath was labored, his eyes as fearful as a man before the gallows. “Poor guy, you tried to help me, didn’t you?”

He nodded with great effort.

She scanned the line of chairs, the row of identical workstations up to Jason’s. His area was larger than the others and the gilt edged mirror close to the size of Pauline’s dining room carpet. Bungee cords cascaded from the arms of his station chair, the chair where she had sat only two days ago. He had umbrella lights on tripods placed around it, a camera on a tripod aimed at the chair. For what, trophy photos? She recalled the elegant photographs on his wall. But those women had long hair. Hers wasn’t long enough to wrap around her finger; he’d cut it himself. She wracked her brain trying to figure out what he had planned for her.

The piranhas swimming in tight agitated circles mirrored her state of mind. She dug her heel deeper between his shoulder blades, felt the vertebrae in his neck through her soles of her loafers.

“Shoot him,” Graber said. “There’s a time for killing.”

Her mouth was dry, her legs taut as springs from her autonomic nervous system on high alert. “No. I won’t kill him.”

“He… he’s too dangerous, got the doors padlocked. Won’t let you go.”

“Don’t worry about me. How bad are you?”

“Losing blood, lower abdomen.”

His voice sounded weaker with every word. The person she’d wrongfully accused of killing her mother urgently needed medical attention.

“I’ll get you help.”

She glanced at the phone on the reception counter ten feet away. “This is your lucky day, Jason. You’ll only have three or four minutes with me before the cops get here. But I promise you’ll think it’s a lifetime.”

He squirmed beneath her foot; she pistol-whipped him for the effort. He cried out in pain. “Harold’s almost dead,” he said. “Didn’t you hear the gurgle? Let him die and there’ll be plenty of time for you and me. Don’t you want to hear what your mother said about you?”

He lay with his face on its side, his cheeks puffing in and out with each breath.

“All I ask is time enough to tell you,” he said, “Cops are quick on the trigger, eager to save court costs and avoid the chance someone like me might cop a plea of insanity. Chances are they’ll shoot me and you’ll never know.”

Oh,
he
was
sly
.

She shook her head, sickened by the slime who killed her mother and driven her father into depression. Suddenly, all the vile things she wanted to do to him seemed too kind.

“I know enough. I heard you tell Graber you killed her. That’ll put you away.” She kicked him in the ribs, heard the same dull thud she’d heard him inflict on Graber before she’d come through the door. “That how you kicked him?” She kicked him again, harder. “See how it feels? Now crawl to the desk.”

Jason inched across the floor. The muscles in his thick arms tensed as he slid one arm forward, then the other.

She inched along with him, recalling how she’d played with rattlers in the hills as a kid, pinning their heads with forked sticks. That’s what she thought of now, pointing the revolver at Jason’s skull as she might at a snake’s.

“Hold it,” she said when they reached the reception desk and the phone. She kept the revolver in her right and punched in nine-one-one with her left hand. Then again, nine-one-one. But there was no dial tone.

“Bastard.” She brought the butt of her gun down on his head. He ducked, setting her off balance. He coiled around her legs, pulled her down. It happened in a heartbeat.

The revolver slipped from her hand, skidded across the floor, only inches from the base of Jason’s chair. They wrestled and tumbled in that direction. One on top, then the other. Their arms flailed, grasping for the Smith & Wesson’s blue steel.

Chapter Forty-one
 

“R
eal sorry to have awakened you, ma’am,” Mendiola said to Aunt Pauline over the phone. He toyed with a fake rosebud as he sat in Becky’s living room. “Not to worry, it’s just a personal call. I apologize for the late hour.”

He switched off the phone, set it on the table and scratched the course stubble below his sideburn. He wished his growing apprehension would disappear and that Meri Ann would walk through the door, her usual prickly self.

“So?” Becky said.

“She’s not there.” He eyed the cassette, the letter from Wheatley, and the two pieces of evidence he’d tucked into plastic baggies. It occurred to him again, that she might be right and that Tina Wheatley hadn’t killed her mother. He drew a deep breath, then another and still it felt like he needed air.

“Robin Wheatley’s always been our pick.” He said it more to himself than to Becky. “And that’s what I’m hearing on the tape. Maybe he set his wife up. Jesus. You think Meri Ann’s at his house?”

She nodded. “Or at Graber’s. What can you do? Call the SWAT team?”

“If we need to. But right now we don’t have time to send folks out on wild goose chases. I’ll cruise by Wheatley’s to see if I see her car and find anything not kosher. If no luck, then it’s on to Graber’s place.”

But it would take twenty minutes or more to get there, even at top speed. And that worried him.

“I want to go,” she said.

“You can’t; we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

He picked up his cellular, dialed Dillon to put her on alert and explained what he had. “We might want to send a car up to Graber’s,” he said. “Have ’em stand by just in case there’s nothing at Wheatley’s.”

Dillon agreed, pretty much gave him carte blanche. But cautioned him: “a mysterious tape and a love letter don’t necessarily mean we got the wrong woman.”

Yet Mendiola knew one thing Dillon didn’t. Meri Ann’s mom had called the killer Birdie and whoever sent the tape must have known that. He rose from the chair, picked up the evidence bags and headed for the door.

Becky stuck to his side, blocked the door as he went to leave. “Just do your job,” she said. “Promise me, you’ll get her out of this alive.”

He didn’t answer, just pushed passed her and went outside. His lungs nearly burst for lack of air.

# # #

They tumbled across the salon’s floor, Jason on top, then Meri Ann. She grappled wildly for the revolver, tore his sleeve trying to keep him from it. But his long fingers clawed across the floor and caught the barrel. Her hand slapped down on his. She grabbed his wrist, jerked it high and smashed it down. The revolver skittered under the jury-rigged shelf at his workstation, an easy reach for him. He scurried under the shelf, picked up the revolver.

Her eyes grew wide, every fiber of her body alive in what she feared was her final moment. She fleetingly saw the full tattoo of a falcon in flight on his bulging biceps.

He was on his knees, a smug look on his face. “It’s my turn.” He leapt to his feet. His back struck the shelf above him. The blow staggered him, then he turned caught by the sound of wood ripping from the wall. The brace gave way, toppling the jug of piranhas to the floor beside him. The thick green glass cracked at impact, spreading veins like Carrara marble. The jug burst in one ear-splitting pop. Water, rocks, fish escaped in a flood. Jason danced around the flipping piranhas, the revolver still in his hand.

Meri Ann took her chance and ran to the back door. Then she saw the padlock. She spun around. Jason was coming down the hall. His office door was open; she darted in and locked the dead bolt. It would give her a minute until he got out his key. She wedged a chair under the doorknob and flew to the telephone on his desk. But there was no dial tone there either.

What to do? He had a gun, and she had a knife strapped to her calf. If she could surprise him, she might have a chance. Wild-eyed, she scanned the room, searching for a place to hide for a surprise attack. Then she noticed that the bookshelves were identical to Pauline’s. Perhaps Jason’s father, the master cabinet builder, had built them to disguise a hidden room.

She bolted across to the shelves, frantic to find a lever. And it was there in approximately the same place as Pauline’s. If Jason’s attic was crammed full of collectibles, surely the room below held a bounty of hiding places, too.

The door latch clicked behind her. Jason had unlocked it, but he couldn’t get in just yet. The wedged chair teetered, but held. All she needed was a minute or two.

She pushed the hidden door open, slipped inside and closed it tight. There was a 25-watt bulb in a wall sconce, as there was upstairs. Enough light for her to see by.

Stairs led down to a closet-sized room with white walls. But there was no place to hide. The only furniture was a ladder-backed chair and a Shaker-style pine table. Her mother’s picture was on the table, a dramatic three-quarter pose in black and white, like the ones upstairs. But this one was a shrine with votive candles on either side. And the Spartan room, a tomb with no place to hide. Panic set in.

Then she spotted another bank of bookshelves. She’d had nightmares like this, opening door after door in an attempt to escape. Could there be another hidden room? She rushed to see, felt for a lever. It was there.

She cranked it open and pushed inside a room as black as tar. It smelled of sulfur, Clorox, and the rancid sweetness of old blood. She slapped her hand furiously along the wall, feeling for a light switch. Bright fluorescent lights exploded the dull black to glaring white.

It was an operating room. No, an autopsy room. A stainless steel gurney was in the middle, beside it a roller table with surgical instruments. Beside that a tub of what appeared to be blonde hair floating in pinkish water. On the far wall there was a bright-white bank of cupboards. One stood fully open.

She approached, transfixed, staring at a wig on a Styrofoam head mold. The wig’s hair was the identical color of her mother’s, the identical flowing style. Meri Ann tried to comprehend what she saw.

She reached out and stroked the hair. Then rolled a strand between her fingers, pushing back the hair at the temple. There was no synthetic cap, no net structure, just hair rooted in doeskin. But how? Then she understood.

Her legs barely held her as she backed away from the cupboard, horrified—it was her mother’s real hair, her skin.

“God help me!” Then seething, “God help him.”

The bookcase latch clicked. She unstrapped the knife from her calf, tucking it into her belt behind her. He must see her hands free, her gesture of supplication, her come hither helplessness. She huddled against the wall, waiting for him.

The bookshelves swung open. He stepped inside. Her muscles hardened at the sight of him as she clenched her hands at her sides.

“Are you ready to come upstairs?” he asked as calmly as if he’d asked for the time of day.

“Why not kill me right here?” she said in as even a tone as his.

“I have plans. And because every breath is precious, you’ll do what I tell you to prolong sucking air into your lungs. Everyone does and you will too. Your mother did.” He motioned with the revolver. “Come now.”

She backed up against the bank of cabinets. “What do you want, my photograph? You want it taken with Mother’s hair. That why you unlocked the cupboard, there?” She nodded in that direction.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. You’re very clever.”

“Not as smart as you are,” she said, intending to feed his ego. “How many women have you killed and gotten away with it?”

“Three, plus a hapless clerk in Garden City. I did him for fun, but not the women. I love women, Meri Ann. I loved your mother. Her hair was like my mother’s, as thick as Asian hair, but fine and luminous with those intense auburn notes. I’d have done anything to keep Joanna with me. It was like having Mother young again. But she wanted to leave with that fool Robin Wheatley.” He pouted or pretended to. “In the end she begged for her life and to be with you.”

Meri Ann’s eyes burned with hatred. “What did you do to her?”

He indicated the room where they stood. “She lived in here till I saw it wouldn’t work. She became despondent, her face drawn. It was cruel, really. Before I killed her, she wanted to make a tape for me to give to you. I’m not a heartless man, Meri Ann. I let her. It’s the one I left you on the answering machine—doctored slightly to give you hope, make you stay in Boise.”