Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_01 (32 page)

I didn’t worry. It was all over now. It never occurred to me to order him to remain where he was.

But Roger surprised me.

It all happened at once, Trevor walking toward me in apparent surrender and Roger abruptly lunging toward his father’s murderer.

Startled, I swung toward Roger.

That instant was all Trevor needed.

In a rush and a jump, he scrambled to his left, flung Rosalia aside, and bent over Burton to snatch up Miranda. Holding her as a shield, he backed slowly across the roof to the east edge, then swung her small, limp body out over the swift-flowing flood-waters.

Roger skidded to a stop.

I aimed the gun at Trevor. But I couldn’t take the chance. If Miranda went into that swirling water unconscious, we would never find her, get her out, save her.

“I’ll throw her in.” The lawyer’s handsome face twisted with fear and an awful determination.

I took a single step toward him. The wildness in his eyes stopped me. I put the gun in my pocket. For now, it was useless and might make everything worse.

Roger made a noise deep in his throat and tensed, poised to jump.

I grabbed his arm and hung on. For Miranda’s life. “No, Roger, no. He means it.” And I clung.

Roger’s chest heaved, his eyes glazed. “He killed Dad. He killed Dad!”

I yelled to be heard over the
whop whop whop whop
of the helicopter rotors. The white and orange crafts were directly overhead now. “Roger, he has Miranda. Wait, let me talk to him.” I could feel Roger trembling.

The door in the lead copter slid back, and a blue-helmeted rescuer bellowed through a loud hailer, her firm voice clear. “Are there casualties among those to be rescued?”

Lyle took charge. He held up two fingers, then pointed toward the mattress. Then he held up eight fingers for the ambulatory evacuees. The wash of wind from the rotors whipped our sodden clothes against us, and the
whop whop whop whop
of the rotors drummed against our ears.

The flight mechanic called down, “Roger. Two
injured, eight ambulatory.” She advised through the loud hailer that the basket would be lowered first for the injured, then the remainder of the party, the injured and three passengers to the first copter, the remaining five to the second.

I gestured for Roger to stay put and I cautiously edged closer to Trevor. I pled with him. “This won’t do you any good. Put her down, Trevor. You can’t escape. Don’t make things worse.”

“Stay there, Henrie O.” He was a big man. It was no effort for him to continue to hold Miranda’s still body out over the water.

I halted. “This doesn’t make sense!” I shouted. “You can’t get away. Give it up. Look, they’ve thrown a line down to Lyle and now the basket is swinging down. Let’s go put Miranda in it.”

“Give me the gun.” His eyes flickered from side to side.

I didn’t like their feverish shine.

The flight mechanic called down: “Hustle. We have only minutes to load if we’re to get back to the station before the eye moves on.”

“What good will the gun do you, Trevor?” The wash from the rotors buffeted us. “You can’t hope to kill us all. Even if you did, you’d be in clear view of the pilots. Give it up. You’re through.”

Whop whop whop whop
.

“No. No way. Listen, I’ll make a deal.” His shout was hoarse and emphatic. “Miranda for the gun. It’s easy, it’s sweet. No problem. I’m not going to shoot anybody—unless they try to take me along. I’m staying here. That’s final.”

“You’ll die if you stay!” I screamed it at him.

Whop whop whop whop
.

“The hurricane’s coming back.” I pointed behind him, at the monstrous dark sky, purplish and black, awesome and horrifying.

Trevor didn’t so much as glance at the clouds.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Behind me I heard Lyle’s shout to the flight mechanic operating the rescue hoist. “This way, this way! Great.” And then the cry, “Here he comes,” and I knew Burton’s limp form was swinging up to the aircraft.

Roger took a step forward.

Trevor didn’t miss Roger’s move. “Five seconds,” he yelled. “That’s all you’ve got and she goes in. One … two …” He meant it. The muscles in his neck were distended. He was like a shot-putter, getting ready to heave. If I waited, Chase’s young wife would be gone, flung to certain death.

Slowly, I drew the gun out of my pocket, placed it carefully on the roof, and kicked it toward Trevor.

It came to rest inches from him.

“Oh, Christ.” Roger bunched to jump.

I swung around and grabbed him again and doggedly hung on. “No.”

Gradually Roger eased back on his heels.

Watching us with those frantic, feverish eyes, Trevor edged forward, scooped up the gun, and put Miranda down on the roof.

I started to breathe again.

With the gun in his hand, Trevor gained confidence. Brusquely he gestured for Enrique to move away from the south edge, the torn section that opened down into the shattered music room.

Enrique moved. Quickly.

Trevor ran lightly to the side, swung a leg over. And then he was gone.

Roger already had his arms around Miranda.

The basket slipped down to the roof, and she was safely ensconced and on her way up to the helicopter.

Lyle gestured for me to go next.

I pointed at Rosalia and Betty.

Then they were gone, and Valerie was in the basket, swinging up into the sky.

Whop whop whop whop
.

The flight mechanic leaned out, using the loud hailer. “Clarify count, please. Were told to rescue eleven. Aboard now are two injured, three ambulatory. We see four on the roof. Where are the remaining two?”

When we’d sent out our distress message over the mobile phone, we’d reported twelve stranded. At that time, Chase had been alive and Haskell had still been on the island. When Haskell left the island, Chase was alive. Now Chase was dead and Trevor gone, hiding out in the music room, desperately, crazily hoping to ride out the hurricane.

Haskell!

Haskell had made it through! That’s why they were expecting eleven. They knew Haskell was safe. Haskell was alive!

I felt a swift rush of pure happiness.

But Lyle wasn’t worrying about who came why or when. He didn’t waste time. He held up four fingers, pointed at them emphatically. Did it once, twice.

“I read you: four remaining to be rescued.” The basket swung down.

I was the second aboard the companion helicopter. I tried, shouting to be heard, to explain to our earnest young pilot that one man indeed remained on the island but that he was armed and dangerous, he’d committed murder twice and was refusing rescue, hoping to ride out the storm and escape before the authorities reached the island.

“Two murders?” the pilot yelled.

“Two.”

“He won’t come aboard,” Lyle yelled.

Swiftly, the pilot commanded the flight mechanic to order Trevor to surrender. She shouted over the loud hailer. They gave him twenty seconds to respond.

Twenty seconds can seem like a lifetime.

But there was no movement. Nothing.

The helicopters turned and headed back to the mainland.

I craned my neck for a final backward glance at the muddy water surging around that remnant of a mansion. That small patch of roof was the only indication man had ever set foot on Dead Man’s Island.

There was no trace of Trevor.

I tried to shake a strong feeling of unfinished business. In hoarse, truncated shouts, Lyle and I fleshed out the case against Trevor Dunnaway during that bumpy and tense flight to the Coast Guard station.

Lyle started it, putting me on the spot. “Burton was dead. He didn’t tell you a damned thing. So how’d you know Trevor bashed him?”

The helicopter lurched, the noise made my ears ache. “Burton either knew something about those shots at Chase …” I paused, then lifted my voice again. “… or he fired them in collusion with somebody. In the first instance, his instinct would be to tell somebody. He would have trusted only two people. If it was the second case, only the same two could have been collaborators.”

Lyle saw it at once, and I had a new appreciation of his perceptiveness. He leaned close, yelled in my ear. “Yeah, sure. The shooting alibied you and Trevor. So Burton would feel safe in going to either one of you. And that’s true of the second proposition: the only people who gained anything from the shooting were you and Trevor. You were automatically eliminated from the list of suspects when Chase was killed.”

The sky was heavy with clouds all around us now. The helicopter wobbled from the buffeting of the wind.

“So what’s the truth—was Burton a good little fellow trying to report to somebody he trusted or was he involved in a plan to kill Chase?”

We didn’t solve that.

But, yelling until we were hoarse, we came up with some plausible ideas, with a lot of conjecture thrown in:

That investigation would reveal Trevor to be involved in some kind of illegality within the Prescott empire.

That Trevor had used his own hair dryer in a kind of double bluff, counting on the fact that he was
alibied during the shooting incident to eliminate him as a suspect in Chase’s murder.

That Trevor and Burton had been in collusion, Trevor persuading Burton to plant the box of marzipan and to shoot at Chase, missing him, of course, in some kind of elaborate scheme to persuade Chase to trust Trevor and be suspicious of Lyle and Roger. Obviously, it had required collusion because Trevor hadn’t been present at the brownstone that weekend.

That’s as far as we’d gotten when we reached the air station.

And that’s about as far as the investigating authorities, which would include the local sheriffs office, Lloyd’s of London, and the private detectives hired by Roger, ever got when all was reported.

The aftermath revealed that Trevor had indeed been involved in the illegal transfer of monies within Prescott Communications to stave off financial collapse.

Some wondered how Trevor had managed to keep his chicanery from Chase. They speculated that Trevor had been forced to kill Chase before the huge interest payments came due October 1 and that Trevor had intended to replace the illegally used funds with the huge chunk of money Lloyd’s owed on the policy insuring Chase against murder. And, in fact, the insurance money did indeed make it possible to save Prescott Communications from bankruptcy.

The press, including all the newspapers and television stations within Prescott Communications, played the story to the hilt. Face it, there is nothing the press enjoys more than a good murder.

This murder had every element necessary to win 48-point heads across the country:

A murdered magnate dispatched in an imaginative way. (Hot tub companies cringed.) The accompanying Hawaiian music was an added fillip.

A gorgeous young widow who had lain perilously near death for days, affording the opportunity for running updates on Miranda’s condition and the joyous relief when she survived undamaged. Much was written about her passionate love for her older husband. No one called it obsession. As it was. I felt certain that it was she who’d searched my room that first afternoon. At least she’d found nothing there to break her heart. But I wondered if she would ever be at peace.

An island kingdom, cut off from the world, steeped in luxury, doomed to sudden destruction. The newspapers carried elaborate architectural renderings, interviews with the interior-design firm, even a description of the room-size refrigerator where Chase had lain until the building succumbed to the storm. This made it possible to speculate on what had happened to his body and ditto that of his murderer, Trevor Dunnaway.

A killer hurricane that ravaged the coast with two-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, prompting a massive but successful evacuation of several hundred thousand residents, including the gallant rescue of those stranded on Dead Man’s Island. The press, of course, relished the old name for the island. Spin-off stories included comparisons with previous hurricanes and the all-time death toll in the great Galveston
storm, long before weather services could warn of impending danger.

The courageous and strikingly handsome stepson who had risked his life on a frail homemade raft to seek rescue for those in peril.

The famous actress who had faced death with aplomb.

The enigmatic manservant who had been arrested as he tried to leave the Coast Guard air station. (A tip, investigators said later. It was easy enough for me to pass a note to the co-pilot saying Enrique was wearing a body belt packed with cocaine. But more about that later.)

The grief-stricken son who had held a press conference to announce his intent to honor his late father’s memory by directing Prescott Communications to vigorously pursue investigative reporting to root out malfeasance in office, desecration of the environment, financial fraud, the inadequate response of society to the mentally ill, drug and alcohol addiction, the insurance scandal in medicine, and children who lived in poverty.

The urbane and charming murderer was the subject of lengthy articles based on interviews with his friends and professional associates.

It afforded the juiciest peek into the world of the rich since the Claus von Billow trial.

And a spate of articles on the retired newspaperwoman turned suspense novelist, Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins. Some old friends, no doubt, were a bit surprised by my willingness to serve as a news source. But I know my fellow reporters: a fed dog doesn’t scratch to dig up bones. I was quite willing to play
raconteur to focus the reporters’ attention on me today and not on my past.

The sensation finally subsided, of course.

The facts about the murder of Chase Prescott provided one of the premier news stories of the decade.

But it wasn’t the true story.