The Girl with a Clock for a Heart: A Novel (19 page)

“To the right,” she said. He rolled forward enough so that his hands slid an inch toward her crotch, and suddenly he could feel the hard protuberance of what was probably the dull end of the knife.

“I’m going to have to pull up your skirt,” George said. “Can you get your hip off the ground?” George had bunched some of the fabric of Liana’s skirt in his fingers and was able to tug it toward him. Liana lifted her hip off the deck. He grabbed another handful of fabric and bunched it in his fingers. A jolt of the boat caused Liana’s hip to come down hard. She grunted. It took about three excruciating minutes, but they did it, Liana arching her body to get her hip off the deck, while George worked the fabric toward him a half inch at a time. His wrists were screaming, and his fingers were cramping, but he didn’t dare say anything to Liana. It was clearly extremely painful for her to lift herself off the deck. He listened to her breathing become pinched and ragged. Finally, when his fingers touched the hem of her skirt, he gave one last violent yank on the fabric, then slid his fingers past the hem. He was now touching Liana’s naked thighs. “Thank God,” she said, letting her body relax.

Her thighs were damp with sweat, and George walked his fingers up to the edge of her underwear. “This job has its benefits,” he said, and she emitted a single tired laugh.

George hooked a finger onto the edge of her cotton underwear, inching further up, feeling her prickly pubic hair through the fabric, then pulled himself closer to her and lifted his hands so that they found the knife, secured horizontally beneath the elastic band. He pulled down on her underwear till he could feel the exposed wooden handle, getting a thumb and forefinger securely on it. As he rolled back the knife came free, nearly snagging on her bunched-up skirt, but he held on, changing his grip so that he had it securely in the palm of his right hand.

“You got it?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Can you cut through the rope?”

“Yours or mine?”

“Work on yours. It will be easier. My arms are completely numb.”

“Give me a moment.” George felt as though the boat had changed course and now the hard midday sun was directly hitting the green tarp that covered them. Sweat was running in steady rivulets from under his hairline. He could smell the fear in his own body odor, mixed with the brine of the ocean air and with something else—the smell of rot, the smell he remembered from the laundry room in the house on Captain Sawyer Lane. Katie Aller, in her shroud of plastic.

He maneuvered the knife so that he was holding its wooden grip in the four fingers of his right hand, its serrated edge pointing down. He rocked his wrist forward and felt the knife snag on the rope around his wrists. He did it several more times and the knife snagged a little less, sawed a little more.

“It’s working, I think,” he said to Liana.

“Thank God. If you can get your hands free, there’s a plastic tackle box that keeps sliding around and hitting the top of my head. I’m nearly positive there’s a gun in there. It’s a revolver.”

“You want me to shoot Bernie?” It seemed an obvious question, but even as George asked it he could feel a tremor of itchy fear in his stomach. He remembered how he’d felt standing in that hallway, waiting for Bernie to stroll toward him with his rifle, and he wondered how much bravery he had left.

“If you can get to the gun, point it at Bernie, tell him to dive out of the boat into the water. He won’t do it, but you’ll have given him a chance. He’s going to try and find a way to talk you into screwing up. Don’t give him the chance. Tell him to go in the water. If he hesitates or does anything different, then aim at his center and fire. It’s him or us, George. You know that. How’s that rope coming?”

“It’s coming.” The boat motor revved down to a mosquitoey whine, and George’s heart hammered at the thought that Bernie had found his dumping ground before he’d had a chance to saw through even a single knot, but then the motor picked up again. “What’s he waiting for?”

“My guess is there’re lots of boats out today. He’s looking for open ocean.”

“You want to tell me how we wound up here like this?”

Liana blew out a steady breath, her breath stale and warm. “I’m not proud of this, obviously.”

“This whole trip, your being here, was all a scam to get those diamonds from MacLean’s safe.” George didn’t ask it. He said it.
If these are my last moments on earth,
he thought,
I have no interest in being lied to anymore by Liana.

“Yes,” she said. “But I didn’t know Bernie was going to kill anyone. I promise you that. He was just supposed to knock MacLean out, take the diamonds, and run.”

“How’d Bernie get into the house?”

“We knew that there would be gardeners on Sunday and timed it to coincide with their being there. I drove to a street where Bernie could walk through the woods and onto the property. He was dressed to look like a gardener, so if he got spotted coming in from the woods it wouldn’t look too suspicious. He’d scouted the house and knew that there was usually a half-open window above the back porch roof. He brought a short stepladder with him. It was easy. He would get into Gerry’s study on the second floor and wait for him. After he got the diamonds from the safe, he would just carry them back through the woods, where I would be waiting for him.”

“Why did you need me?”

“I really did not want to show up at MacLean’s house myself. What I told you about our relationship was true. His wife was dying, and he was probably unstable. It made much more sense to send a neutral party. Plus, if you went, that meant I could drive the car. Bernie didn’t want to leave a strange car on a street in some tony neighborhood in Newton for three hours. It would attract too much attention. How’s that rope coming?”

George was still sawing, but he had felt what Liana had probably felt: Bernie taking the boat in a wide circle, the motor revving down into an idle. Had he found his dumping spot?

“I feel like I’m cutting through rope but my hands haven’t loosened up any. Why did you come and meet me at the Kowloon? You didn’t need to.”

“I thought it made sense to check in on you one last time before Bernie and I made our getaway in the morning, but Bernie freaked out. I didn’t realize how convinced he was that you and I were in it together and were going to screw him over. That’s why he went and threatened your girlfriend and why he started killing witnesses. He snapped.”

George felt the nylon rope weakening. He yanked with his wrists, but they were still securely tied. He angled the knife differently and connected with another piece of nylon. He started to saw again.

“We can get out of this,” Liana said, but to George, her voice sounded less than sure.

“Keep telling me things. It helps.”

“Like what?”

“Where were you all yesterday?”

“In New Essex mostly. At the house you found. I was trying to reason with Bernie and get him to just leave town with me. He was convinced we left too many witnesses. You, of course. Katie Aller . . .”

“Who was she?”

“I met her down in the islands. She was a drug addict who was burning through her parents’ money. They’re dead, and that’s their land and property all up and down Captain Sawyer Lane. I got in touch with her when I knew that Bernie and I’d be coming up. She let us stay in her house—”

“And use her cottage.”

“—and use her cottage, yes, and—”

“And this must be her boat.”

“It is. Look, George, I could say this a thousand times, and I know it wouldn’t make a difference, so I’ll only say it once. I am so sorry for dragging you into this. I had no idea that there would be any danger involved. You have to believe me on that. I deserve to die today, but you don’t.”

George was beginning to sense a loosening in the rope. Blood was rushing back into his fingers, and he could swivel his right wrist at least forty-five degrees. The new freedom allowed him to change the angle of the knife and get better purchase. He made two strong cuts, and the rope popped loose, freeing his right hand. His left hand was still bound and held by the rope that was wrapped around his midriff.

“My hand’s free,” he said.

“Both of them?”

“Just my right hand, but I think—”

The boat made a thunking sound, as though something had bumped up along its side. “What was that?” he asked. Now that he had one hand free, his fear had ratcheted up a notch. Hopelessness had been replaced by a small amount of hope. A surge of adrenaline made his head swim. He squeezed his eyes shut to let the feeling pass.

Liana said, “Shit,” and he opened his eyes. She was straining her head back, her eyes looking upward as though she could see through the tarp. He was about to ask her what was going on, but suddenly he felt it too. The boat was slowing down, almost to a stop. The motor had stopped droning; it burbled and stuttered a little before turning off completely. The boat rocked forward then back in the open water, and the sudden silence felt overwhelming. Like a kid playing hide-and-seek, George squeezed his eyes shut again and stayed quiet, as though Bernie might forget the two live humans under the tarp.

“Rise and shine,” came the nasally voice, shockingly loud in the new silence. Bernie pulled the tarp halfway down their bodies as though it were a sheet. George peered up, but the sun, high in the cloudless sky, was blinding, and all he could see was an obscured figure looming above them, an outline of shimmery black that erased their last vestige of hope.

Chapter 23

S
ay your good-byes, you two,” Bernie said.

“Bernie, please, hold up for just a moment,” Liana said, her voice unnaturally high. “Think about what you’re doing. This isn’t you.”

Bernie, still a dark, unfeatured figure blocking the high sun, fanned his arms out as though he were trying to stretch a knot in his back. “Remember when you convinced me to come along on this ride?” he said. “How you told me that breaking and entering another man’s house, knocking him out, stealing those diamonds, would be child’s play? That it would only be difficult the first time? You were right. It wasn’t difficult at all breaking into his house, but it was a little bit difficult hitting him with that hammer.”

Bernie laughed, awkwardly, the way someone might laugh at his own unfunny joke at a cocktail party. “I thought that hitting someone on the head with a hammer would be like hitting a block of wood, but it wasn’t,” he continued. “It was like hitting a piece of fruit. The head of the hammer went right in. It even stuck there for a moment. Do you know what that was like?”

“Bernie, you know I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“You told me to knock him unconscious.”

“Not with a goddamn hammer. Jesus, Bernie, think for a moment what you’re about to do. You can have the diamonds. You can go away. We’ll dump these other bodies. No one will be any the wiser.”

“Yeah, I’ll dump the bodies,” Bernie said and moved out of the path of the sun. Its midday force hit George’s face, and he squinted, wondering, for one nonsensical moment, where his sunglasses were. Bernie bent, and George heard a dragging sound, like a heavy piece of furniture being pulled along a floor. His eyes were adjusting to the flat cloudless glare, and he could make out that Bernie had pulled something heavy parallel with Liana. She was arching backward to try to see what he was doing.

“Bernie, stop it,” she said, using a new tone of voice, trying to approximate a motherly authority, but all George heard, and all Bernie probably heard, was a desperate attempt to try something new, to try anything, that might stop what now seemed inevitable.

George sawed as fast and hard as he could with his freed right hand, working on the tight nylon that bound his left wrist to the loop around his waist. He was acutely aware of the sudden quiet of the open ocean and knew that he needed to work at his restraints without making a sound or drawing attention to himself.

Bernie got hold of Liana by the rope around her waist and hoisted her up slightly, then rolled her onto her front. The motion caused her to exhale sharply, then groan. The tarp slid off her lower half, and Bernie looked down at her hiked-up skirt, her exposed legs and buttocks. “What’s this?” Bernie said. “Did you give your boyfriend one last feel? Jesus, Jane, that’s perverted.” He reared back and made his barking laugh, the one George had heard a few days earlier when he’d first encountered him outside the cottage in New Essex. Hearing him call her Jane, George realized how little Bernie knew about the woman he was preparing to murder.

“Think what you’re doing,” Liana said, the tone of her voice changing again.

“I have thought about it. I thought about hitting you on the head with a hammer like I hit that old man and then dumping you into the ocean. But then I thought that was too good for you.” Bernie was bent over Liana’s body, and George could now see what he was doing. He had dragged over a cement block, about a square foot, and he was tying it to Liana. “No, I think I’ll just dump you into the sea as is, let you think about what you did as you drown.” Bernie was working fast, and as he finished speaking, he straightened up and tightened the knot he had just made. Liana twisted her head toward George. Hair obscured half her face, but George could see one scared and red-rimmed eye. Bernie tugged Liana toward the edge of the boat, her exposed skin squeaking on the boat’s linoleum deck.

George had nearly cut through the rope that constrained his left hand, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Even if he cut all the way through before Bernie tipped Liana into the ocean, his ankles were still tied together. His hands would be free, but there was almost no chance that he could maneuver his way to the tackle box, remove the gun, and shoot Bernie, not with the lower half of his body still hog-tied.

Bernie tugged violently at Liana again, pulling her up against the edge of the boat.

“Stop,” George shouted, and Bernie turned, an almost-surprised grin on his face, his grayish-purple teeth exposed.

“The boyfriend speaks,” he said.

“I called the police before you shot me,” George said. “I told them your plan to dump us in the ocean. They’ll probably be searching the area now, with planes.”

“Oh, yeah. How did you know I was going to do that?”

“I saw the boat earlier, at the cottage. Where else would you dump the bodies?”

Bernie looked at him with some interest. He had lifted the cement block and dropped it over the edge of the boat. The rope attached to Liana was taut. All Bernie had to do now was lift her body and roll her into the water. “If that’s the case,” he said, “then I ought to work faster. When those search planes fly overhead, I wouldn’t want to have any evidence still on the boat.”

Bernie turned back to Liana. She was now struggling, bending her body back and forth against the restraints. Bernie planted one foot near her head and one near her waist and bent to lift her. George yelled out “Help” as loud as he could on the off chance that another boat had drifted toward them. All he heard in return was the raspy squawk of a circling gull. George yelled again as Bernie grabbed hold and began to lift Liana. They could see each other through Bernie’s spread legs, and Liana shook her head at George. The ocean breeze had caught her hair and pulled it off her face so that he could see both her eyes. They were now flushed of their panic, resigned. George stopped yelling.

“George, I’m sorry,” she said. “I love you.”

“Audrey,” George said.

As George tore frantically at his still-bound left wrist, Bernie rolled Liana’s body up and over the edge of the boat. George heard a single hard splash, then nothing. The cement block had dragged her instantly under the water.

Bernie turned and leaned against the edge of the boat, placed both of his large hands flat on his thighs. “That was harder than I thought,” he said, his voice coming out a little breathlessly. George couldn’t look at him. Exhausted, he rested his forehead on the sticky deck, focusing on Bernie’s shoes, a pair of tasseled loafers. One of the cuffs of his suit pants fluttered in the breeze. George breathed deeply through his nose and took in the acrid coppery smell coming off the deck of the boat. A large emptiness swallowed him. Knowing how soon death was coming, he felt deeply alone. An image of his father flashed into his thoughts.

George heard the scuffed sound of Bernie standing up.
He’ll remove the tarp from me,
George thought,
see the knife in my swollen fingers, and take it away. He will find the severed rope and laugh at my feeble attempt to escape, then retie the rope and give me my own personal cement block to take with me to the ocean floor.

With his head still plastered to the deck, George watched Bernie move toward the front of the boat. George lowered his chin down to his chest and could see three more blocks of cement nestled behind the forward seats. Bernie picked one up with one hand and moved out of his vision. “You’re awfully quiet, George. I’m saving you for last, so you’ve bought a little time. Feel free to talk. I wouldn’t mind some conversation.”

George felt Bernie’s feet move along the deck, the tarp rustling but staying in place. A soft thud made George think he’d lowered the cement block, then he felt two hands, one on his lower back and one on the backs of his thighs, shove him forward a couple of feet. The knife, still gripped in his freed right hand, scraped along the textured decking, and George thought for sure that Bernie would have heard it, but all he said was, “Stay right there, will ya?”

George looked down at his body. The tarp was still over him. Bernie would be busy for a few minutes securing cement blocks to Karin Boyd and Katie Aller before dumping their bodies. He fingered the rope, finding the frayed edge where he’d cut almost three-quarters of the way through. He repositioned the blade and started sawing again.

“I was surprised by this one,” Bernie said. “MacLean’s niece. You do attract the pretty ladies, George, although I can’t say I know why that is. I loaded my darts with just enough juice to knock out someone your size—it’s not an easy science, you know, but it was a little much for this one. Put her to sleep for good.”

George had just managed to cut all the way through the rope around his left wrist, and his arm, its muscles deadened, dropped to the deck. He faked a coughing fit to cover the sound, buckling over and rubbing his numb, stinging hands together. The fake coughing fit soon turned into a real one, the spasms of his diaphragm causing his near-empty stomach to produce its last teaspoonful of bile. He spit it onto the deck.

“This’ll all be over soon,” Bernie said. George couldn’t see him, but it sounded like he was hoisting Karin Boyd’s body over the edge of the boat. Hoping that Bernie was turned away, he quickly moved his hands over his midriff and found a double loop that went relatively loosely around his waist. There was a knuckle-size knot just over his left hip. George knew nothing about knots. He ran his fingers over it, noting only that it seemed extremely tight and that he couldn’t locate any frayed ends to work free. The knot secured a length of rope that was tightly drawn across his thigh and between his legs. If he could sever the rope, although his ankles would still be bound, he would be able to stretch out his body and his hands would be free. He’d have a chance to make it to the gun inside the tackle box.

George heard a splash—Karin Boyd going to her watery grave—and then he heard a deep exhalation from Bernie. Was he getting tired? He was strong, that much George knew, but even though the day was relatively cool, the sun was at its peak and Bernie was dressed in dark suit pants and a shimmery gray silk shirt.

“Ah, Katie,” Bernie said as George heard the sound of rustling plastic. He imagined she was still rolled up and bound like a carpet, the way he’d seen her in the house on Captain Sawyer Lane. “You didn’t really know Katie, did you?”

“I met her,” George said, wanting to keep Bernie talking. George had gotten the blade of the knife under the taut rope that connected his waist to his ankles.

“Then you probably know that I didn’t so much kill her as beat her to the punch. Do you know how old she was? Twenty-two going on eighty-two. She’d been a drug addict for less than a year, but what a year.” Bernie barked out a laugh. “You know who introduced her to drugs, don’t you? Your precious Jane. She had a real knack with the ladies, just like you.”

George was starting to feel weak, his head swimming, sweat slicking his entire body, and he needed all the energy he could muster to cut his way through the last few pieces of rope. The sun hitting his face made him feel like a piece of meat under a broiler.

He heard Bernie grunt a little, and the plastic rustled again. “People are heavier when they’re dead, you know that? I hurled this thing around a couple of times when she was still alive, and she didn’t weigh a whole lot more than a rag doll, but now, Jesus, I’m getting old.”

The rope George was working on split in two and his legs were freed. He was still bound at the ankles, but he was no longer trussed like a turkey. It was all he could do to stop himself from stretching out the cramped, numb muscles of his legs, but he didn’t know where Bernie was looking. Stretching his head back as far as possible, he could see only the sky, now streaked with a few scudding clouds. He heard the splash as Katie Aller was dropped into the sea. He was now alone with Bernie on the boat, and he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to cut through the rope binding his ankles. He twisted his head the other way, looking back toward the spot where Liana, bound up, had been lying. Bumping up against the side of the boat was the tackle box she had mentioned. Next to it was a bright red life vest, and George wondered if it wouldn’t be better to simply grab the vest and dive into the water, take his chances there.

He heard the scrape of Bernie’s shoes on the deck behind him. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air he pulled into his lungs felt thin and deficient.
Any moment now, Bernie will rip the tarp away from me,
he thought,
see how I’ve worked my way free from the rope, and then I will have to act, striking out at him with a knife designed to cut through nothing tougher than a New York strip.

Bernie made a sound behind him, a brief humming noise in his throat that sounded like a question, then took three steps toward the helm. George watched him bend and unlatch a compartment, pull out a pair of binoculars. He brought them to his eyes and stared into the distance. George had been given his chance.

With as much speed as he could muster, George rolled from his side onto his hands and knees, then pushed himself forward from his knees and toward the tackle box. His muscles felt slow and stiff, as though he’d been tied for days instead of hours. He unsnapped the box’s lid and dumped its contents onto the deck. Tools, fishing gear, and several flairs spilled out, along with a black revolver that had been wrapped in a greasy cloth. George grabbed it with his right hand and rolled back into a sitting position. Bernie was still calmly standing at the helm, the pair of binoculars in his hand. There was a slight quizzical smile on his lips, and George watched Bernie’s eyes move from his face to the gun in his hand and back to his face.

“It’s not loaded,” Bernie said.

“You sure?” George asked and pulled the hammer back. It clicked into place easier than he thought it would. His arm was shaking, out of both fear and fatigue, but he didn’t care.

“Go ahead and fire it,” Bernie said. “It really isn’t loaded. Why don’t you just take that life jacket and—”

George pulled the trigger. A slight recoil bucked his hand, and the gun issued a sharp bang that sounded like a firecracker. Bernie dropped his binoculars onto the deck and lifted his right hand to his neck. A terrible burbling sound came out of him, and a dark sheet of blood spread down his front, soaking his satiny shirt.