A Single Eye (48 page)
I eased to standing, behind him. I could grab his knee and yank hard. It would land him on his face, but only for a moment. Frantically, I looked for a cudgel, a metal bar. The only things in the room where the oil lamp and the chair. If I rolled the chair hard . . .
Leo sat, legs crossed, the blue nylon sleeping bag still spread on the floor around him. The smoke from the oil lamp filled the room like incense.
“Goddamn it, Leo, I left the Cacao Royale humiliated, in front of my friends, disgraced in front of people who enjoyed laughing at me. Do you know how that eats at you? There isn't a day you don't think
if only
. But dammit Leo, now, after six years, I could have gotten it all back. This was my one chance and it's rotting in the front seat of a truck stuck in the mud!”
Incense filled the air. Leo looked up, locking eyes with Barry. Leo's too-big features seemed enormous against his wan skin. He was a small, thin, sick man, but strength flowed from his eyes. He reached his left hand up to Barry. Barry didn't bend, but loomed lower to take it.
I held my breath.
Barry bent closer and hissed, “My one chance to redeem myself !”
Roshi grinned at him, that same big grin he'd shared with me minutes earlier, and said, “Chance to be a polished mirror on a stand?”
Barry jerked forward.
I lunged for the chair, pulled it into position, braced my feet to send it flying.
Barry bowed. “Roshi,” he said softly.
Barry was still shaking. I was shaking. Now that I looked at Barry standing there before roshi, his hands outstretched in his bow as if holding out the illusion that had kept him at arm's length these six years, I knew he couldn't have killed Aeneas. He could have shoved him off the bridge, but before Aeneas hit the water, Barry would have been racing down to the stream, propelled by his remorse. He hadn't killed Aeneas or poisoned Leo.
I felt such a rush of warmth for Barry and for Leo, I could feel it in my body.
The incense surrounded us, all three. The incense rose as if a dozen sticks were suddenly burning, as ifâ
“Omigod!” I yelled. “Fire! The tower is burning!”
“F
ire!”
Barry didn't move. He stood, still smiling down at Roshi, and Roshi was smiling up at him.
“Fire!”
Barry still didn't react. Whether from exhaustion or fear, Barry was useless.
Getting out of a burning fire tower was all in a day's work for a stunt double. But stunts were done with Kevlor suits, and fire engines standing by. This was bare skin and trees that would ignite like roman candles.
Pushing away panic, I started shouting orders.
“Roshi, are you strong enough to hang on to Barry?”
Leo nodded, with an expression more of hope than certainty.
“I can carry him down the stairs,” Barry said, pulling him to standing.
“Too late for stairs! The flames are halfway up! Knife? Is there a knife, clippers?”
Leo pointed to the cabinet. I grabbed clippers.
“This whole tower's going to crumble. Come on. Fast!” I ran outside. Smoke poured up from the damp wood, flames from the dry. The pulley carriage banged in the wind. Five minutes? Wishful thinking? Arson fires burn faster.
Arson! The killer! Even if we made it down, he'd be waiting, watching us climb, slide, down into his trap. I had to divert him, but there was no time. Nothing to use. The oil lampâtoo small in the dark. The chair? We couldn't throw it far enough to draw him away.
Wind snapped my hair into my eyes and I pushed it free. The veil of smoke was closing in. Desperately I looked around. The pulley carriage! “Barry! The rope cable! Loop it over your hands, hang on for your life, all our lives.”
Barry set Leo down against the wall. Leo looked up, eyes wide with interest. I cut the cable. The carriage shot down into the spark-filled dark. I grabbed the pulley and cranked like mad, churning the loosened cable up toward us.
“Barry, knot your end. Hurry!” The rope looped onto the walkway. We needed forty feet. No way to be sure. “Cut again, above your hands. Knot the piece beneath.”
Barry cut. He was holding the severed length. The forty-foot length.
“Tie it on the corner of the walkway, away from the stairs and the fire. Firm knot. It's got to hold you both. You can't rappel; no time. You've got to slide; brake with your feet. You're going to hit hard. The killer may have gone after the carriage, but he'll see it's empty. He'll be back in a minute. Butâ”
“I . . . can't.”
I was cranking the second rope. I didn't stop. “No time for âcan't.'”
“Darcy. I just can't. Heights. I'll go dizzy.”
Waves of sympathy and utter frustration washed over me. The second rope was looped on the walkway. It looked short. A flame shot up where the carriage had gone. The smoke was thicker. “Barry, cut this now!”
He cut. I turned to face him. The man was shaking. Advice was useless. Mere words. Barry's fear was beyond words.
A shard of flames shot up from the stairs. The whole platform swayed. Roshi stood propped against the windows, his black robe crackling in the wind.
I grabbed the ropes, tied the longer one around the far corner post, and made a large loop at the other end. “Here, Barry.” I slipped the loop over his arms.
“Darcy, I can't.” His face was red with humiliation. The poor guy was shaking.
I pressed his hands around the rope.
“No! I can'tâ”
I pushed him over the edge.
He may have screamed, but any sound was lost under the crackling of the wood as part of the stairs collapsed. The tower lurched toward the failing stairs. It flung Roshi toward them. I leapt for him, caught his black robe, and skidded my feet against the wall of the tower room. He spun toward meâas if he'd been alert for the right move. Using the taut robe like a rope, he turned and pulled himself close enough to catch my hand.
The tower swayed again. The thick smoke turned the world black. With Leo behind me, I felt along the outer wall of the tower room, around the corner, to the far corner post and looped the last rope over it. The killer could be waiting for us below. I turned to Roshi.
“I know,” he said, “âhang on.'”
“Tight. The rope may be short.”
He grinned the pickup truck grin. “How sweet is the strawberry.”
Tiger at the top, tiger at the bottom, mouse eating the vine. How sweet is the strawberry.
Leo was on my back. I pushed off and slid fast.
Flames shot up beside us. The rope seared my hands. I couldn't feel Leo at all. I squinted through the smoke hoping in vain for an upright to rappel against. Fire singed my cheek; I could smell my hair burning.
Thunder.
It wasn't thunder. The fire tower was collapsing on top of us.
“Hang on!” I let go of the rope and we fell.
I curled into a
C
, landed hard on hands and knees. I was half standing, my hands having slammed against a pile of rocks.
Roshi wasn't on my back. Frantically I peered through the smoke. “Leo! Roshi!”
“Here!” His voice came from a few feet away. “I'm okay.”
“Barry!”
“Safe,” Leo yelled.
I didn't know why Leo answered for him, but there was no time to find out. The killer was still around here. Flames shot into the sky. The whole tower was crumbling. There was nowhere to go but into the woods toward the path, toward where the carriage must have crashed. Flames turned the trees light. I ran past them, skirting them, squinting for the path. Debris from the falling tower crashed beside me. Smoke clogged my lungs. I kept squinting to clear the ash from my eyes.
Trees canopied the path. I raced down, half running, half skiing, almost falling over the broken pulley carriage. The light dimmed. I held my forearms out, bounced off the trees.
“Could be . . . wrong way,” I muttered.
Then I spotted him, thirty feet ahead rounding a curve in the path. In a few seconds he'd be beneath me. I grabbed two saplings, swung forward and leapt. I came down hard on his back.
I'd knocked the wind out of him. He lay gasping, desperate for air.
The impact knocked me back into a tree. I stood, panting, glaring down at him, fury welling so fast I couldn't speak. I wiped the soot from my eyes, and in that instant he rolled over onto all fours, stretched out a hand and forced out, “You okay?”
“Stay where you are, Gabe!”
“I can't,” he said trying to push himself up. “No time. Rob, he set a fire! Fire! People up there! Got to get them down!”
I
t took me only an instant to see through Gabe's maneuver, but in that time he was on his feet, above me on the path, where he could see the way down. But I was blocking that way. I swayed slightly side to side like a goalie wary for the first sign of a shot. I had to take Gabe here. If he got past me in the woods he'd be gone, off on some path he'd discovered years before, or back to the road to the highway, or to the monastery, the kitchen knives and the students sitting unsuspecting in the zendo. The wind snapped through the branches, smoke streaked the air. I focused on Gabe.
“Gabe, you poisoned Leo!”
“You're crazy, Assistant. I couldn't have. I wasn't even here yet. My car broke down, remember! You saw me. Trudging up the road.” His eyes narrowed. “You saw me there, standing under all those trees. Those big, looming trees, just like the ones here.”
Suddenly the trees behind him, on each side of him, leapt into focus as if they were alive. Their branches swayed, leaves crackled. They blurred and I couldn't see them, only feel them in my swirling stomach. They were swaying with me back and forth. Sweat covered my face, my back. If I could shut my eyes . . . but I didn't dare. I focused hard on Gabe, only him, as if he was standing crouched in front of a blue screen. “You fooled me with that,” I said. I could barely force out the words; they were not quite loud enough for him to hear. He moved closer. “When I tried to figure who could have poisoned the cocoa, I gave you a free ride because I believed you'd just arrived. But,” I kept my gaze on his face, “I forgot about that path, the one that leads from the monastery to the road, to just about where your car is. Gabe, you've been here before, you know the path. If your car broke down, why would you walk miles on the road when the path is much shorter?”
“Gimme, a break, Assistant. It was dark. I'm a New Yorker; I'm not used to driving.” He shifted slightly to the left. The trees loomed behind him.
I froze, desperate to regain focus, not to let him see my panic. “You're a New Yorker, you're used to chutzpah. You're a master. Here's what happened. You ditched your car, ran the path, hid outside the kitchen until Barry went to bed. You know about Roshi's special cocoa. We all know where it's kept. You crept into the kitchen, dropped the poison into the container. Outside, no one saw you, because, like you said, it was dark. Did you go back along the path and sleep in the car for a couple hours before your walk along the road? Or did you hide out on the grounds, maybe behind the wood in the shedâ”