Dark Waters (29 page)

‘Biathlon? Shit! That's the skiing and shooting one, right?'

‘Right. Cross-country skiing and rifle shooting!' Anthony said.

‘Damn skippy!' Emmett all but shouted.

I woke up in a sterile, white room. When I turned my head to the right, I saw my wife.

‘Hey,' I said.

She'd been resting her head on her arm, propped on the back of a straight back chair. She startled, then looked at me and smiled. ‘Hey, yourself,' she said, leaning forward to kiss me.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘You had a mild heart attack,' Jean said.

‘Did I die?'

‘No, you're very much alive,' she said, caressing my arm.

‘No, I mean for a minute or something. I want to scan my brain for any afterlife experiences.'

Jean laughed. ‘No, baby, you didn't die, not even for a minute.'

‘Where am I?' I asked.

‘In the ship's infirmary. Their doctor checked you out, gave you some meds, and you'll be fine until we hit Galveston.'

‘Where are the boys?' I asked.

‘Lucy and Mike took them. They came out of the food court area right after Early called me.'

‘Early called you?'

Jean nodded her head. ‘Yes. John's crestfallen that he panicked and didn't save your life. Early is quite proud that
he
did.'

‘Yeah? No kidding? Go Early,' I said. ‘What time is it?'

Jean looked at her watch. ‘Twelve-thirty,' she said.

‘Baby, go on back to the cabin and get some sleep,' I told her.

‘Absolutely not,' she said.

‘What? You're gonna sleep in that straight-back chair? You know you need to get your brace off and rest your legs. If you don't, you won't be walking tomorrow, no-way, no-how.'

‘I'll be fine—' she started, but I interrupted.

‘Uh uh,' I said. ‘Go!' I pointed at the door, a scowl on my face. ‘Now!' Then I motioned to her with an index finger. ‘But come here first and give us a kiss!'

She laughed and leaned over, giving me a kiss that, had my heart been all that weak, woulda killed me. ‘Um,' I said, ‘this bed is bigger than it looks.' I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

‘OK,' she said, laughing. ‘I think you're on the mend. But call me if you need anything, OK?'

‘Will do,' I said and watched her walk out the door. She hadn't been gone more than ten minutes when I realized I needed to pee like a racehorse. I was in a fairly small room, with two regulation hospital beds, a gurney and assorted medical supplies. The only door was the one Jean had taken to get out. So, unless I wanted to pee where I was lying, I was going to have to go find a bathroom.

I tried sitting up and found that I could do it fairly well. I put my feet over the side and that felt OK. So I tried standing up. I was a little dizzy at first, but I waited and that went away. I walked to the door. So far so good. I saw a sign just down the hall and recognized it as the bathroom, on the other side of which was Heinrich's security area. I felt good, knowing exactly where on the boat I was, and who I could go to if I needed help. I had no idea where the doctor was or what he or she, for that matter, even looked like.

I opened the bathroom door, made it to the toilet and let loose. It took a while. I must have been holding it in for quite some time. Once I'd finished and flushed, I opened the door just enough to hear voices. Recognizing them, I stayed where I was and listened.

‘I told you not to come down here!' Heinrich was saying.

And then Crystal Weaver said, ‘But that cop had a heart attack, right? So we're OK. Nobody's going to find out anything!'

I heard kissing noises. ‘Lizbet, listen to me,' he said. Shit, I thought, her name's not even Crystal. Phony name, phony hair. And I
knew
the boobs were phony. ‘We're too close now to blow this. The old geezer can't get off the ship tomorrow. You need to do the pillow tonight! You should be in there with him right now!'

‘I know, baby, I know, but I wanted to see you! You saved me from Josh, and I still have a lot of thanking to do.' I heard more kissing noises. Jesus, Heinrich, I thought. I never had a clue. And I'm a real good investigator. But they hadn't said a word about Lance. The ‘old geezer' had to be Vern, and the pillow, the ‘do the pillow.' Was she supposed to suffocate Vern in his sleep? And who would question the death of or do an autopsy on an overweight fifty-something man on his honeymoon with a hot number like Crystal? Or should I say Lizbet. Shit, I remembered seeing my phone on the hospital tray table in my room. I couldn't even call someone to save Vern.

How did Heinrich save Crystal from Josh? What did she mean by that? Had Heinrich killed Josh? If so, why? How had he ‘saved' Crystal? What was Josh doing to Crystal that required saving?

‘Go,' Heinrich said. ‘Call me when it's over, then try to sleep.'

‘In the same bed?' she said, alarm in her voice.

‘Yes. You must wake up in the morning to find your husband dead. That's been the plan all along, Lizbet. Ever since he took out that insurance policy.'

Lizbet giggled. ‘God, what a sweetie! A million dollars!'

‘Yes,' Heinrich said, his voice getting testy. ‘Now you must go! Do it!'

‘All right, all right!' she said, her voice fading. ‘I just don't want to sleep with a corpse, you know?'

I heard the elevator door close, and Heinrich's voice say, ‘Stupid bitch,' as his voice faded, too. After another minute, I looked out and the corridor was empty, so I moved as quickly as my broken body would allow back to the infirmary to my phone. I called Mike Tulia's cell phone.

‘Hey, Milt,' his sleepy voice said. ‘How you doing, man?'

‘Listen to me closely, Mike. Crystal is on her way to her cabin to kill Vern. She's going to smother him with a pillow—'

‘Jeez, man, call Heinrich—'

‘Heinrich's her partner,' I said.

‘Holy crap!'

‘Exactly,' I said. ‘Mike, you gotta do it. You've got to go to Vern's cabin and save his fat ass.'

‘Ah, shit, man,' Mike whined.

‘Hey, it's a rotten job,' I said, ‘but somebody's gotta do it.'

‘Well, fuck,' he said. ‘OK, I'm going, I'm going.'

He hung up and I sank back on the bed. When I did my eyes went to the door of the infirmary, where Heinrich, chief of security for the Star Line ship, was standing.

I
t took less than an hour to find a judge willing to sign a search warrant. Emmett got Nita and Anthony to go with him and they headed to Reba Sinclair's house. Unfortunately, once there it was hard not to notice Beth Atkins' new yellow VW parked in the driveway. They came in two cars – Emmett in his, Nita and Anthony in another. Emmett radioed Anthony, who was driving, to go around the corner where his car couldn't be seen from Sinclair's front window.

‘Don't need a hostage situation here. I'm going to go up to the door like it's nothing serious—'

Before he could finish talking, he heard the sound of a rifle shot and the glass on the passenger-side window blew out. Emmett then felt a sharp sting on the back of his neck as the driver's-side window blew out. He wasn't sure if a bullet had grazed his neck or if the blood seeping down his back was from glass cuts from the broken windows. At that point he really didn't care – he just fell to his side. Lying across the front seat, he called out to Anthony, ‘Shots fired! Shots fired! I'm hit, but it's not much. Call Charlie Smith for back-up and get your butts back here!'

They were in city territory. He'd forgotten to call Charlie and let him know he was serving a search warrant on Sinclair. He was gonna get his ass chewed out for this – if everything turned out OK.

He turned on the loudspeaker and spoke into the handset. ‘Miz Sinclair! You need to stop shooting at us. You need to throw out your gun and come out with your hands up—'

What Emmett considered to be a reasonable request was met by a barrage of bullets. He started to count them then figured why bother? She was in her own home – she probably had boxes of ammo. He would if he was a world-class-almost Olympic shot. His car was hit with all six shots, one even coming through the front door passenger side, very close to his head. He twisted around until he could open the driver's-side door then slid his body out to the street. He had his gun in his hand but was afraid to shoot for fear of hitting Beth Atkins.

Anthony pulled up sideways to Emmett's car, virtually blocking the street. He and Nita bailed out, guns drawn.

‘What do you wanna do, Emmett?' Anthony asked.

‘She's got a hostage. We can't go shooting her house. We'd probably kill Beth Atkins.'

Nita handed Emmett the bullhorn from the car they'd been in. ‘Hard to get to the loudspeaker,' she said.

Emmett turned the bullhorn on. ‘Reba, the city police are on their way. This place is going to be surrounded in a very few minutes. Is Beth OK? Just let me know if she's OK.'

The front door opened and Beth Atkins stood there, her arms raised, Reba Sinclair standing behind her.

‘Deputy!' Beth Atkins called out. ‘She said for y'all to back off! She wants to leave in her car and she said she'll drop me off somewhere and call you and tell you where.'

‘No way, Reba. You're not taking Beth anywhere! Just give it up before the police get here and it really gets bad. Right now all we've got you on is keeping Beth in your house against her will, which is just a minor infraction,' Emmett lied.

‘Bullshit!' Reba yelled from the doorway. And Emmett had to wonder how in the world this woman got the job as principal at a Christian school! ‘This would be considered kidnapping! I was pre-law at SMU! And you think I killed Darby Hunt, so that's even worse! Just get out of my way or I'll kill this bitch!'

At that moment police squad cars with sirens blazing came tearing down the street, which distracted Reba Sinclair. Beth Atkins tore away from her, falling to the ground. Reba looked after her with a shocked expression and Nita stood up and fired, hitting Reba in her gun arm. She dropped her weapon, her left hand grabbing her bleeding arm.

‘Didn't wanna kill her, Emmett,' Nita said.

Emmett stood up and slapped Nita on the back. ‘You done good,' he said, and jogged up to the front door.

Reba was crying, looking down at Beth, and Emmett soon realized she wasn't crying from pain but from perceived betrayal. ‘Why? Why did you do that? You told me to do this!'

I helped Beth to a standing position. ‘I told her to take me out here to tell you her demands, Emmett,' Beth said.

‘No!' Reba shouted. ‘She told me to shoot her father! And if y'all figured it out, we'd run away together! That's what you said!'

‘I told you she was nuts, Emmett,' Beth said, again using Emmett's name instead of her usual use of ‘Deputy.'

Emmett looked at Anthony, who had come up behind him. ‘Anthony, why don't you cuff Miz Atkins here, just in case, while I take Miz Reba to the ER. We'll meet you back at the station. Just put Beth here in the interrogation room.'

‘What the hell are you doing?' Beth demanded. ‘I had nothing to do with this! She killed him!' She whirled on Anthony as he tried to cuff her. ‘Stop that!' she said, but he grabbed her arms behind her back and cuffed her.

Emmett put some gauze on Reba Sinclair's gunshot arm, taped it up good, then handcuffed her good arm to a metal ring on the back seat of his squad car. On the drive to the ER, and while in the ER, Reba Sinclair told a different story than the one he'd heard from Beth Atkins.

It started off the same: they'd met at a women's bar in Dallas, gone on a date, then Beth had gone back to Longbranch with no plans of seeing Reba again. But Reba had other ideas. She had fallen in love with Beth rather quickly, so sent her résumé out to schools all around the Prophesy County area, and had finally been picked for the Christian school principal's job, mainly because she was willing to take the really, really bad salary they offered. She'd called Beth many times to let her know she was in town and wanted to see her, but Beth always put her off – that is, until about a year and a half ago.

That's when, according to Reba, she found out about what had happened with Beth's parents. Beth called her out of the blue, and asked her out to dinner at the new vegetarian restaurant. This was followed by an intimate evening at Beth's home. It was after sex that Beth began to cry, and told her about what her birth father had done to her mother.

‘She told me his sentence would be up in a year and half, said she just couldn't stand the idea that he was going to be free after what he'd done,' Reba told Emmett. ‘Do you know what her mother told her right before she died? She said, “Lizzie,” – that's what she called her – “Lizzie, you just can't trust a man.”' Reba beamed at him. ‘But she knew she could trust me.'

Emmett felt a little sick to his stomach. Most of what Reba had told him she could have made up, and the part about Beth's parents was local history. But the Lizzie part? That had to come from Beth herself.

‘So what was the plan?' Emmett asked.

‘She thought I should start emailing him, go to see him, become his girlfriend. She even had me take that old bat, his mother, up to see him. After the first trip with her, when she didn't shut up the entire way, I brought a thermos of coffee laced with a sleeping pill for her. Did the trick. I could get to the prison without having to listen to her rattle on and on about how awful Beth and her family were.'

‘But why did you buy him those expensive gifts?' I asked, thinking of the Harley and the huge flat-screen TV.

‘Beth told me to. She said that would give him a false sense of security! Her idea was to kill him when he was in bed with me!' Reba said, and shuddered. ‘I said no way, Jose! I wasn't about to sleep with him. But then she remembered me almost going to the Olympics,' she said, and I could see her in the rear-view mirror smiling timidly, ‘and she said I should do the honors. And I knew I could do it clean, no sweat.'