Past Malice (26 page)

I stepped up onto the first rung and made good progress up past the first floor. It was only at that point that I started to realize just how narrow the climbing area was and how sweaty my hands were getting. Funny how that sort of thing only comes to one rather too late, well after the moment at which an idea that seems like a gem at the time is past recall. I concentrated on moving up, promising myself that I didn’t need to go all the way to the roof, just up high enough to get a nice overall picture of the site. A handful of photos, five or
six minutes max, and then I was out of there, safely on my way home, and no one the wiser.

I could feel my hand, slick with sweat, slip against the rust-pocked surface of the rungs. I redoubled my hold and gasped.

Highly trained
archaeologist,
that prudent and tardy little voice in my head reminded me. Not trapeze artist or chimpanzee.

Shut up and concentrate, I told myself. Hurriedly wiping my hands off again, I continued upward, a little shaken.

I made it up to the top and then realized that the peak of the roof was in the way of the best shot. I couldn’t get what I wanted if I stayed where I was, so I considered climbing back down and trying again in the morning. This of course risked righteous rejection by the scaffolding folks and the ire of the insurance-conscious Fee. It probably wouldn’t happen.

My other option was to climb out onto the roof. The scaffolding wouldn’t be there tomorrow evening and a picture from the upstairs window just wouldn’t work as well as what I had in mind. So I kept going.

It didn’t seem like such a long step from the scaffolding to the roof, but suddenly aware of the nearly three stories of open space below me and the lack of safety lines or nets, I paused and felt a wave of vertigo wash over me. It was a small step, but an important one, as they say. I didn’t really need these pictures, I told myself. They weren’t that important.

Chicken, jibed a little voice in my head. This one sounded remarkably like Bucky.

There really was nothing to be afraid of, I reassured myself. It is purely a matter of will over fear. I focused my concentration, and wishing that my hands didn’t slide around quite as easily as they did, took the large, half-jumping step
over onto the roof. It was roasting up there, in spite of the clouds that had darkened the sky all day, and the smell of hot slate and tar was quite strong. It was like stepping onto a hot cast-iron skillet. The heat instantly surrounded me, and I felt like a drying piece of beef jerky.

Once my heart stopped pounding so hard and I had the chance to catch my breath, I was immediately rewarded. I had a magnificent view of the harbor and was just in time to see the evening flotilla as the boats headed back from what should have been a fabulous day’s sailing. The site below me was becoming a little overshadowed, but it didn’t matter. The great thing was that the planting holes, which seemed randomly placed on the ground, from up here appeared to demark two sides of a snakelike walkway. I made a note to check the artifacts from those areas, to see if we were getting higher concentrations of mettling material—broken pottery, pipe stem fragments, shells—that might have been used to form the path itself. I snapped a few shots, getting the ones I most wanted, and then realizing I was getting carried away, decided it was time to get going.

It was at that moment that I heard the front door slam in the house below me.

I froze, trying to decide what to do. Anyone who’d come in from the front would have seen my car out in the parking lot and might be wondering what I was doing here. Embarrassing but not fatal; I would simply indicate that I was up on the roof, explain myself, and we would all have a good laugh. That was the sensible course of action.

I half-scuttled, half-crawled over nearer to the front of the house and the main entrance. “It’s only me! I’m on the roof. Don’t worry, I was just—”

The alarm in the house began to go off, nearly causing me to jump out of my skin and almost break potty training. It was looking decidedly as though there was more trouble
brewing here than my potential embarrassment. But perhaps I had only startled someone into setting off the alarm?

I went back to the other side of the roof to the scaffolding, determined to get down from there as quickly as possible. I might just make it down before the police arrived, and that would suit me just fine. I already had all I could do to explain my presence on the site after hours; it wouldn’t help me any to be found clinging to the scaffolding of a house whose alarm is alerting the local law enforcement that there is an intruder.

I admit that I was feeling pretty shaky; the alarm was a particularly obnoxious noise and it seemed as though its main purpose was to drive any potential burglar insane. I was also starting to get vertigo again, merely from the act of being where I should not, when I should not, with that great view reducing itself to a pretty background on which I could splat myself if I wasn’t careful. But I am usually pretty good at concentrating first and having a hissy fit second; that’s why it took me rather too long to realize that it wasn’t my imagination, but the top step of the scaffolding was farther away than I remembered.

It was the shuddering of the entire structure that finally drove it into my brain that the scaffolding was actually moving away from my foot as I reached out for it. I risked a look down to try and find that damned rung and saw, far below me, a taut rope tied around the bottom of the scaffolding. I spent two or three precious seconds following the line of the rope over to the shrubs and trees that blocked most of the view of the Chandler House’s air conditioning plant and storage shed from the Bellamy property, when I should have been using that time to get back onto the roof or get the hell down off there.

My pause narrowed my range of choices. I had to get
back onto the roof or else be pulled down with the rest of the scaffold.

I scrabbled back toward the comparative safety of the roof and watched as the scaffolding lurched away. The knot slipped, and I heard a heavy car tear away, unable to see it from my side of the roof. My heart was in my mouth when I realized what might have happened: I was lucky to get back onto the roof. Although the scaffolding didn’t collapse completely—it only swung away from the house, with the resisting screech of bending metal, listing against a massive oak tree. There was no way that I wanted to be on it.

Any thoughts of leaping from the roof into the trees or shrubs were stillborn; it was still too far away for me to make it to a tree and maybe climb down. It had been a good number of years since my last tree-climb, too, and I didn’t trust my shaking hands or my frazzled nerves that far anyway. That sort of stunt only happens in the movies, and there wasn’t an awning or hayrick around when I needed one.

My heart beat so hard that I was almost dizzy, and I was trembling so hard that I thought I might fall if I wasn’t careful. Someone had deliberately tried to pull me off the roof along with the scaffolding. It was little enough consolation to hear the wail of sirens in the distance over the persistent screech of the house alarm. Someone really had tried to kill me.

I
WAS GLAD TO GET OFF THAT ROOF.
T
HE HEAT WAS
still strong, even though the sun was going down, and I couldn’t help but feel toasted by those low-raking rays. Between the sunset and the warm air trapped under the roof, I was probably lucky not to—

“Emma! Are you listening to me?”

I was brought back to reality by the sharp insistence of Detective Bader’s question. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re sure you didn’t see the car? Color? Make, plates, anything?”

“No, I’m sure. I was kind of distracted at the time.”

“And the driver?”

“I didn’t see anyone. I heard the door slam, I hollered, then the alarm, and I suppose there was an engine after that, but couldn’t see anything from where I was standing.” I took another sip of the water that he’d given me; it seemed as though I could still feel the heat from the slate tiles on my face.

“Are you okay to drive yourself home?”

I looked at him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good girl.”

I frowned. “You know—”

Bader didn’t even notice I’d said anything. “If you’re sure, you can get going. Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t climb up on anything higher than a stepladder, until we find whoever’s got it in for you.”

I got home a little later and went upstairs looking for Brian. I found him flaked out on our bed, and for a moment, it looked as though he’d grown a huge, furry black beard. Quasi was sleeping on his chest, curled up as nice as a pie, with his head resting under Brian’s chin. At the sound of my soft, scuffling footstep, the cat woke instantly, and glaring at me as best he could with his one good eye, opened his mouth in a soundless protest. He slunk off to become part of the shadows under the bed, only leaving the room when I was out of the doorway, tail low to the ground, slithering around the corner.

Brian sat up and stretched and smiled. “I was getting worried about you.”

“You’re not going to like this.” I confessed where I’d been and what happened and got ready to take my lumps: I’d been stupid and done something I’d promised I wouldn’t and I was lucky not to be dead. His smile fading, he listened to the story, growing more and more pale as it progressed, silent the whole time.

After he confirmed that I was indeed unhurt, he asked, “So you climbed up on the scaffolding, without permission, to take pictures of holes in the ground?”

“It wouldn’t have been any safer if I’d had permission—”

“But it would for the simple fact that there would have
been people around. Maybe whoever was in the house wouldn’t have been there, right? This is what you promised me, that you wouldn’t be out at the site alone, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it was stupid of me. I admit that and I’m sorry that I scared you. But I only meant to be there for, what? Less than a half hour, tops. And I wasn’t doing anything, you know, to do with the murders. I was just trying to do my job.”

“That apparently doesn’t worry the killers, does it?” I began to think he was going to wear a trough in the floor with his pacing.

“What do you want me to do, Brian? I could stay away from the site, yes, fine. But what about the courthouse? There are all kinds of criminals lurking around there every day, not to mention some fairly upstanding citizens who also happen to have motives for the murders. Do you want me to stay away from there too? What about the library? Oh, hell, what about the whole of Stone Harbor? Should I just stay out of a place because something bad happened there? Or do I go on about my business, taking ordinary precautions, and try to carry on with my life?”

“I’m just saying, I can’t be with you all the time—”

“Brian, I know, but even if you could, what good would that do?”

“I could be there, look after you?”

“How?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“I mean, I understand your instinct in this, but…Brian. What could you do?”

“What does it matter? Someone tried to kill you and I’m not going to just stand by and wait for it to happen.”

“Brian,” I said again, as gently as I could. “What could you do about it?”

“I think being there is a good start,” he said stubbornly. “There’s safety in numbers.”

“There are numbers, at the site, during the day. Yes, I made a mistake, and I’m really, really sorry for it. But are you planning on going with me to the library? To school, come the fall? You can’t be with me every second, you know.”

“I know. But it would make me feel better, if I’m there with you.”

“Brian, how long have you been taking self-defense? Like I am, with Nolan?”

There was no answer.

“How many fights have you ever been in, in your whole life? I mean, counting in high school, on the street, whatever?”

I already knew the answer and so did he. “A couple. I can handle myself.”

What I wanted to say was, sweetie, you’ve only got about thirty or forty pounds on me, you’re just about six feet, which doesn’t make you very physically imposing for a guy. You don’t have any kind of physical training, not even a mean instinct, at all. You work in a lab all day, listen to music and write about it at night, and you’ve never been in anything more serious than a scuffle in your life. It would have been realistic, it would have been logical, and it would have done no good at all. Worse than that, it would have wounded the man who was the love of my life, who only wanted me to be safe and was willing to do everything in his power to ensure that. He was as aware of these facts, these realities, as I was, and to say them out loud would have done nothing except make him wish that he was something other than he was, which I couldn’t stand.

But even touching on the subject as indirectly as I had had bruised his ego, and he did what anyone would do in that situation. He got angry.

“Emma, look, I love you, but taking a handful of lessons with Nolan doesn’t make you Wonder Woman—”

“I know that.”

“—and it doesn’t, frankly, do a lot to reassure me. I’m just afraid that it’s going to make you cocky, that you’ll assume that you can handle more than you can.”

“Brian, I—”

“And since you can’t even seem to remember to bring your cell phone with you or keep it charged or learn to stay off the fucking roof, things that any twelve-year-old can manage, you’ll forgive me if I’m not as impressed as you think I ought to be.”

“I had my phone with me, it was in my bag.”

“It has a belt clip.”

“Being on the roof at the same time that anyone was in the house was an accident.”

“It was an accident on your part. Not on the killer’s and that’s what you seem to forget. His will in this matter.” He took a deep breath. “I think this is where you ask the cops for some protection.”

“I don’t think it works like that. I mean, they’re not going to assign me a bodyguard or anything.”

“No, but if they think that someone who is a potential witness is endangered, they might take an active interest. Talk to them. Please.”

It wasn’t so much a request as a demand. It was Brian’s starting offer for letting me off the hook for the moment. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

“Good. I need to get some space from this for a while. I’m going out for a bit.”

“Brian—”

He took my hand and shook his head. “My office is full of graduate students, there’s no room in here for us to talk,
much less for me to think. I’m going to drive safely, I’m going to think, I’m not going to do anything stupid. Don’t worry. I’m mad and scared and I need to figure out what to do about it.”

“You can’t do it here?” I was almost pleading.

“Hon, there’s no space in this house to think anymore. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

He gave me a kiss, and I was absolutely miserable. I heard him go downstairs, heard the door slam, and he drove away, mad, for the first time in our relationship. I was at a loss.

I went downstairs and found Bucky already in the kitchen.

“Whoa, must have been a good fight.”

“Come off it, Bucky. You haven’t got the faintest idea and I’m not in the mood for it.”

“You don’t think I can hear you and Brian arguing? I’m in the next room!” Suddenly she was engrossed in the magnets on the refrigerator, rearranging them into an unlikely tableau where the fish appeared to be swimming among various famous paintings. “So. Is he coming back?”

I stared at her, but she was serious. She actually thought that Brian was leaving me. “What do you mean? Of course he’s coming back.”

She looked sheepish and a little defensive. “Well, it was a pretty big fight….”

“Yeah, it was. So what?” Then I realized what she was getting at. “Okay, Bucky, guess what? This is what a mature relationship looks like. Brian’s upset and I can understand that; this is not an easy thing to figure out for either of us. He’s not running away from anything, and neither am I. He’ll be back later, after he’s had a chance to think.”

“You sure?”

I gave her a disgusted look; I had used up my diminishing
stores of patience for the night and had none left for her indirect questions about relationships. “Yes, I’m sure. Look, we’ll sort it out because we both want to. Good relationships don’t just happen. When you hit a bad patch, you don’t just dump it and look for something else. You duke it out as fairly as you can, you stop and get your breath before you say something stupid or hurtful, and you try to find the solution that benefits everyone, okay? I mean, it’s absolutely worth it, but it’s bloody hard work.” I plopped myself down on a chair. “You should try it sometime. You might be surprised at how things can go; it might simplify your life some.”

I suppose I shouldn’t have said that; we weren’t really talking about her, but I was mad and she was being dense. Bucky only shrugged, arranged the speckled trout magnet so that it looked as though it was studying a Corot, and pulled the refrigerator door open.

“So why do you keep nosing around the site?” Bucky asked as she fished through the fridge. “And don’t tell me you’re just going out there because of work. You just can’t seem to keep yourself away from it.”

“I do it because I can,” I said tiredly. “Because I should if I can.”

“That’s it?” My sister emerged from her exploration triumphantly holding two bottles of beer aloft. “It’s not because you’re bossy and you’re a control freak—”

“I’m not bossy! I am authoritative and well-organized,” I said.

“Insisted the control freak.” Bucky sat down and slid one of the beers down toward me. I caught it, just as the base of the bottle left the table. “So it’s not because of those two sterling traits, not because you want everything settled and orderly, preferably to your standards and expectations. Maybe it’s because you’re nosey—”

“Curious is a better word.” I opened my beer and then passed the church key down to Bucky, intentionally tossing it a little short of where she could reach it.

“—or because you’re good at investigating things.” Bucky ignored the church key and removed the cap from the beer bottle by jerking it sharply down against the edge of the table. If I had tried it, I would have broken the bottle.

“Hey, watch the table! Jesus, Buck, just because the house is a mess doesn’t mean you get to treat the furniture like it’s disposable!”

“What did I do? There’s no mark!” Sure enough, there wasn’t so much as a nick in the aged oak wood. I scowled at her. “It’s all in the wrist. Right, where was I? Right, you’re good at investigating things.”

“Yeah, so?” I crossed my legs and drank deep from my bottle.

She peered at me curiously, like I was something suspended in a jar of formaldehyde and not her sister. “Why do you get defensive when I’m telling you you’re good at something?”

“I’m not.” I uncrossed my legs and sat up straighter.

“Yes, you are. You curled up like a hedgehog. Hell, why shouldn’t you be good at it? You have a natural talent, something that Grandpa Oscar was able to foster, something you’ve honed yourself over the years. Archaeology is something you love, and you’re good at it, it’s in your blood, so why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why not admit to yourself that you investigate these other things because
you like it
?”

I looked away from her. “What do you care what I say or don’t say?”

“Because I’d like to see you, just once in your life, admit that you’re doing something because you like it and not
strangle yourself with rationalizations that only account for a small part of the story. Big words you’re bound to use, like ‘obligation’ and ‘morality,’ sound so much more noble than ‘I like it,’ don’t they?” She began to wheedle. “C’ mon, Em, admit it, I’m the only one here. You like prying into other people’s business—that’s a professional requirement for you—you like the idea that you can catch a bad guy, you like doing things you’re not supposed to be doing and all under the oh-so-high-toned rubric of responsibility!”

“Bucky—”

“You get off on coloring outside the lines, you love the idea of doing something naughty, all in the name of being a good citizen. Come off it yourself. Just say it for me once, Em.”

“Bucks, you couldn’t have picked worse timing,” I said. I put my nearly untouched beer bottle in the sink and left the kitchen for my room. I changed into my workout gear and went to the gym.

I don’t bother working out when I’m in the field. I could say it’s because I’m getting all the exercise that I need, but really, it’s usually because there’s just no time and I’m too damned tired. I do move around more when I’m out in the field, but it’s hardly aerobic and never sustained. Somehow, though, even just sitting and thinking and answering questions for eight hours leaves my muscles aching by the end of the day, don’t ask me how it happens. So it actually felt pretty good to run a few laps in air-conditioned splendor and lose some of my tension.

It was just as I was starting to warm up, put on a little speed, and really get into the effort that I almost heard him sneak up on me. That in itself was a minor triumph, just realizing the split second before he spoke that there was a
presence
beside me. So it was a great credit to me that I didn’t fall on my butt, that there was just a prickling at the back of my neck, and I had already started looking to my right as I heard the words.