Twice Dead (74 page)

He shook his head at her, waved the bottle of aspirin, and said, “You need something stronger than these, Mrs. Frasier. Something lots stronger. You'll never live to be as old as I am if you don't see to it now.”

“Why don't you talk to Lieutenant Dobbs in Eureka?”

He looked at her, saying nothing more. Lily didn't feel like standing there arguing with the old man to change his mind, with the dozen other people in the store likely listening, so she paid and left, knowing those people were thinking she was one sick puppy, no doubt about it.

“That's it. Nothing much, really.” She waved the bottle of aspirin. “Thanks, Simon.” He handed her a bottle of diet Dr Pepper, and she took two of the tablets.

“Isn't it interesting no one wanted to speak to me,” she said, “except Mr. Bullock. They were all content to hang back and listen.”

“It's still a beautiful town. Tennyson, Mom, and Dad have been busy,” Simon said. “How about some lunch?”

After a light lunch at a diner that sat right on the main pier, Lily said, “I want to visit my daughter, Simon.”

For a moment, he didn't understand. She saw it and said, even as tears stung her eyes, “The cemetery. After I leave, I know I won't be back for a while. I want to say good-bye.”

He wasn't about to let her go by herself. It was too dangerous. When he told her that, she simply nodded. They stopped at a small florist shop at the end of Whipple Avenue, Molly Ann's Blooms.

“Hilda Gaddis owns Molly Ann's. She sent a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses to Beth's funeral.”

“The daffodils are lovely.”

“Yes. Beth loved daffodils.” She said nothing more as they drove the seven minutes to the cemetery set near the Presbyterian church. It was lovely, in a pocket nestled by hemlock and spruce trees, protected from the winds off the ocean.

He walked with her up a narrow pathway that forked to the right. There was a beautiful etched white marble stone, an angel carved on top, her arms spread wide. Beth's name was beneath, the date of her birth, the date of her death, and beneath, the words
She Gave Me Infinite Joy.

Lily was crying, but made no sound. Simon watched her go down on her knees and arrange the daffodils against the headstone.

He wanted to comfort her but realized in those moments that she needed to be alone. He turned away and went back to the rental car. His cell phone rang.

It was Clark Hoyt, and he was excited.

TWENTY-ONE

 

There was nothing more for Savich to do in Antigua. Timmy Tuttle, with two healthy arms, had Marilyn, and Savich didn't want to even think of what he was doing to her.

Or maybe two different people had her, one wild-eyed man with black hair and two arms, and a woman with one arm and madness and rage in her eyes.

Savich couldn't stand himself. He'd set up Marilyn, gotten an FBI agent killed, along with a local police officer, and left chaos in his wake. He knew he'd see Virginia Cosgrove's sightless eyes for a very long time, and that long red gash that had slit her throat open.

Jimmy Maitland had taken his arm, trying to calm him down. “Batten down the guilt, Savich. I approved everything you did. We faced something or someone that shouldn't have been there. It happened. You've got to prepare to move on.”

Maitland shook his head, ran fingers through his gray hair, making it stand on end. “I'm losing it. There's nothing more we can do here. We're going home. I'm leaving Vinny Arbus and his SWAT team in charge. They'll keep looking for Marilyn and coordinate with local law enforcement. This confusion, Savich, it will unravel in time. There's an explanation, there has to be.”

Savich didn't let Sherlock out of his sight. He realized soon enough she was different—more quiet, her attention not on any of them, and he'd look at her and know she was thinking about what had happened, her eyes focused, yet somehow far away.

There was so much cleanup, so many explanations to give, most omitting the inexplicable things because they didn't help anyone to know the sorts of things that could drive you mad. And most important, there was no sign of the man who'd taken Marilyn Warluski from the Saint John's airport.

When they got back to Washington, Savich left immediately for the gym and worked out until he was panting for breath, his body so exhausted it was ready to rebel.

When he walked in the front door, feeling so exhausted each step was a chore, his son was there to greet him, crawling for all he was worth right up to Savich's feet, grabbing onto his pants leg. Savich started to reach down to pick him up when he heard Sherlock say, “No, wait a second.”

Sean yanked hard on his father's pants, got a good hold, braced himself, and managed to pull himself up. Then he grinned up at his father and lifted one leg, then the other.

All the miserable unanswerable questions, all the deadening sense of failure, fell away. Savich whooped, picked up his son, and tossed him into the air, again and again, until Sean was both yelling and laughing, one and then the other.

It was Savich who wrote Sean's accomplishment in his baby book that evening. “An almost giant step for kid-kind.” Then “The leg lift, one at a time—he's getting ready to walk, amazing. His grandmother says I started walking early, too.”

In bed that night, Sherlock nuzzled her head into Savich's neck, lightly laid her palm over his heart, and said, “Sean brings back focus, doesn't he?”

“Yes. I was ready to fall over from working out so hard when I walked in the house, and then he crawls over to me and pulls himself up. Then he lifts each leg, testing them out, nearly ready to take off. I didn't think I had any laughter left in me, but I guess I do.”

“Don't feel guilty about it. You should have seen Gabriella. She was so tickled when I got home, so proud of both herself and Sean that she couldn't wait to show off what he could do. Those leg lifts, I haven't read about that in any baby books. Gabriella got some video of him doing that with me. I swear she didn't want to leave this afternoon. I expect her husband to call me and complain about what demanding employers we are.”

Savich settled his hand on her hip, kneaded her for a moment, thinking she'd dropped weight, kissed her forehead, then turned on his back to stare up at the dark ceiling.

“Dillon?”

“Hmm?”

“I waited until Sean was in bed and we were lying here, all relaxed.”

“Waited for what, sweetheart?”

She took a deep breath. “I've remembered some stuff that happened in that room at the airport.”

 

 

 

Hoyt said, “You'll never believe this, Simon!”

“Yeah, yeah, what, Clark?”

“Lieutenant Dobbs, he's got—”

Simon heard the slight shifting in sound, perhaps a small movement in the backseat of the car, but just as he knew something was different, he felt something very hard come down over his right temple. He slumped forward on the steering wheel, his forehead striking the horn.

It blared.

“Simon? Simon, where are you? What happened?”

Lily heard the horn. Their rental car? But Simon was there, surely. Then she realized something was very wrong. She was on her feet in a second, racing down those beautifully manicured paths to the visitors' parking lot. She heard the man running behind her, just one man; she heard the deep crunching of gravel beneath his feet.

She ran faster, veering away from the parking lot, running back into the thick stand of hemlock and spruce trees. She was fast, always had been.

She heard the man shout, but not at her. He was shouting at his accomplice. What had happened to Simon? The horn was still blaring, but it was more distant now. And then she realized that he must have fallen on the horn. Was he dead? No, no, he couldn't be, he just couldn't.

She was through the trees, out the back, and there was the damned cliff, miles and miles of it, running north and south. She had been here before, and there wasn't any escape this way. What to do?

She ran along the edge of the cliff, searching for a way down, and found one, some yards ahead just before the cliff curved inward, probably from sliding and erosion over the years. There was a skinny, snaking trail, and she took it without hesitation. There was nothing ahead except empty land dotted with trees and gullies. They'd get her for sure, that or shoot her down. Maybe there was something there on the beach. Anything was better than staying up here and being an easy target.

The path was steep, and she had to slow way down. Still she tripped a couple of times, and the last time, she had to grab a bush that grew beside the trail to halt her fall. It had thorns, and she felt them score her hands and fingers.

She vaguely heard birds calling overhead.

She knew the men had to be nearly at the top of the trail now. They'd come after her. What was down here except more beach? There had to be someplace to hide, some cover, a cave, anything.

Her breath was spurting out of her, broken, tight. A stitch ripped through her side. She ignored it. She had to be calm, keep herself in control.

She kept her eyes on the winding trail. Wouldn't it ever stop? She heard the men now, yelling from the top for her to come back up, they weren't going to hurt her.

She managed three more steps, then there was a shot, then an instant ricochet off a rock one foot to her right, scattering chips in all directions. A chip hit her in the leg, but it didn't go through her jeans.

She hunkered down as much as she could, twisting to the left, then the right, going down until at last her feet hit the hard sand on the beach. She chanced a look back up to the top and saw one of the men start down after her. The other man was aiming his gun at her. It was a handgun, not accurate enough at this distance, she hoped.

It wasn't. He shot at her three more times, but none of the bullets seemed to strike close to her.

She stumbled over a gnarly piece of driftwood and went flying. She landed on her stomach, her hands in front of her face. She saw wet sand, driftwood, kelp, and even one frantic sand crab not six inches from her nose.

She lay there for a moment, drawing in deep breaths, feeling the stitch in her side lessen. Then she was up again. She saw the man coming down the trail, but he wasn't being as careful as she'd been. He was a big guy, not in the best of shape. He was wearing those opaque wraparound sunglasses, so she couldn't really make out his features. He had thick, light brown hair and a gun in his right hand. She watched him stumble, wildly clutching at the air to regain his balance, but he didn't. He tumbled head over heels down the trail and landed hard at the bottom, not moving. His gun. His gun was her only chance. She'd seen it flying. She ran to his side in an instant. She picked up a big piece of driftwood, realized it was soggy and not heavy enough, and grabbed up a rock instead. She leaned over him and brought the rock down on his head as hard as she could. She slipped her hand inside his coat and pulled out his wallet. She shoved it into her pocket, then saw the gun some six feet back up the trail, just off to the side, lying on top of a pile of rocks.

The man on top was yelling, firing, but she ignored him. She got the gun, turned, and ran for all she was worth down the beach.

 

 

 

Savich felt his heart pound faster beneath his wife's palm. He shot up, turned on the bedside lamp, then faced her. “Tell me.”

“I remember being scared for you when I saw you go into that conference room. Then I'm sure I saw Timmy Tuttle dragging Marilyn into that security room across the hall. I ran into the room, the three other agents behind me. The room was empty. At least that's what I thought at first.

“I saw this bright light, Dillon. It nearly blinded me, and I swear to you, for some reason I just couldn't move. The light was right in front of that big window, and I know I saw Timmy and Marilyn in the middle of that light.

“I could hear the other agents yelling at each other. I realized they weren't seeing what I was. Still I couldn't move. I was nailed to the spot looking at that white light. Then Timmy Tuttle grabbed Marilyn tight around her neck, and ...”

“And what?”

“Dillon, I'm not crazy, I swear.”

He pulled her against him. “I know.”

“They disappeared. It was like they were right in front of me, then they were in front of the window, and the window was bathed in the white light. Then they receded through that white light until they were gone. Then everything seemed to close down. That's all I remember.”

Savich said, “That's fine, Sherlock. Well done. It fits right into the rest of it. It seems logical to everyone that Tammy Tuttle used some sort of mass hypnosis. You know how David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China? How he got sawed in half with millions of people watching, most of them on TV?”

“Yes. You think Tammy has this skill?”

“It makes sense. There she or he was with Marilyn, and then she or he just wasn't there. I think the whole thing was this big performance she worked out to show us we're dealing with a master. You know what else I think? I think Tammy knew I was trying to trap her and using Marilyn as bait. She knew we'd be at the airport waiting for her. She was ready for us. I also think she really wants us to believe that everything we saw was supernatural, beyond our meager brains. But it's not. She's just very, very good. She wanted to scare us all to death, paralyze us. I do wonder, though, why she didn't try to kill me.”