Death Qualified (43 page)

    Somehow I could come to some sort of decision that I hadn't been able to make before. It sounds crazy, doesn't it?" She trailed off; her hands had gone back to clutching each other again.

    There was silence in the room. Now and again the wind made the fire sputter, or it drove a puff of smoke back down the chimney. Little of the sound of the wind penetrated the house, but Barbara felt that Nell had brought the storm in with her, and that it was raging in her head.

    She felt frozen by the icy winds that blew in her head. Finally Frank cleared his throat.

    "Nell, what is it you think you should do?"

    "Testily," she said in a whisper.

    "Tell them I didn't kill Lucas."

    The silence this time was deeper; no one moved. Barbara realized she was watching her father, not Nell, and she jerked her gaze away. Again, she was thinking bitterly.

    Again.

    "Nell," Frank said slowly.

    "You know we've been over that. You can't do your case any good by taking the stand, but you sure can do it a lot of harm." He took off his glasses as he spoke and polished them, peered through the lenses, and put them back on to look at her over the rims.

    When Nell remained silent, Barbara stood up.

    "Wait a second," she said. The ice that had entered her was re leased in her voice, her manner. She hurried out and went to the dining room where she began to snatch papers away from the stacks that still covered the table. She found maps and drawings and carried them back to the living room. Her father was talking when she returned.

    "We used to meet down at the store, or in the woods.

    Chatted a bit. He was a good man, and shrewd. He knew a thing or two, he did. He wouldn't ever tell you to do anything that could hurt you in any way. Now you know that as well as I do."

    "Maybe that's what he's trying to tell me, that it wouldn't hurt to tell the truth. He always said that."

    Barbara swept a magazine or two and some newspapers from the coffee table and spread out the map, covered it with a few sketches.

    "Look at these, Nell," she said crisply.

    "These are preliminary sketches, but they're ac curate. Look at them!" She waited until Nell's eyes turned to the drawing of the ledge.

    "If you came up this path, the way you said you did, exactly what could you have seen?"

    "I told you all that. That's the path, and I saw Lucas.

    He said, "Watch this." Her voice faltered and she looked at Barbara.

    "I told you."

    "So, pretend I'm Tony De Angelo Her voice deepened became rougher and meaner with heavy sarcasm.

    "Mrs. Kendricks, what are these bushes in the drawing?

    Vine maples? How high are they? And you could see over them from down there on the trail? Were you on stilts, Mrs. Kendricks? Did you have a periscope, perhaps?"

    Nell blanched, grabbed the drawing, and studied it.

    Barbara went on in her cold, hard voice, "Weren't you actually over here, Mrs. Kendricks? On the edge of the clearing where the main trail is? Isn't that the only place where you could have seen the entire ledge, both sides of it? Isn't that the only place where you could have seen Lucas Kendricks that day? Didn't you choose the main trail that day because the other one is too steep, and you were burdened by the rifle you carried? Didn't you lift that rifle, aim it at Lucas Kendricks, and shoot him dead?"

    "No!" Nell whispered, but not in answer to the questions that Barbara had fired at her.

    "No!" she said again, more shrilly.

    "I have to go." She stood up, a distant, staring look on her face.

    "What's wrong?" Frank asked.

    "Are you all right?"

    "No!" she cried, and ran from his reaching hands, ran from the room.

    "I have to go. I have to."

    By the time they caught up to her she was already fumbling with the coats and jackets in the hall closet. Frank grabbed her by the shoulders and held her fast.

    "What's happened? Where do you have to go? What's wrong with you?"

    A hard tremor shook her. She said, "I can't tell you. I have to go now." Her voice had become almost too calm all at once.

    Baffled, Frank let go of her. She reached past him, brought her jacket out of the closet, and put it on.

    "For heaven's sake!" Barbara said sharply.

    "You can't leave it at this! What do you intend to do?"

    "I don't know," Nell said. She finished buttoning the big wooden buttons of her jacket, drew a wool cap from her pocket, and put it on. She looked from Barbara to Frank with a curious, almost helpless, expression; then she shook her head slightly, turned and left them standing speechless at the front door.

    She had driven to Frank's house, no longer willing to cut through Doc's property and walk over. Now she drove home too fast and screeched to a halt outside her own garage. The rain was still very heavy, was still being driven in by the powerful storm front; she ignored it and walked around her house, toward the trail up to the ledge.

    Within a dozen steps into the forest the wind abated, tamed by the massive trees. The trail had become a watercourse Water swirled around rocks, plummeted down from rock to root to ground, roiled behind a dam of a fallen tree. She kept her pace steady; her feet knew this trail too well to be fooled by the camouflage of water and mud. As she climbed, the air grew colder, and presently she realized that the water underfoot had changed as well;

    it was not rushing as before. Pockets of snow appeared, snow was piling up behind rocks and logs. She made her way more cautiously. Water was navigable, but snow in the woods was treacherous, especially if ice had formed first. The snow deepened until the rocky trail was smooth and even; she moved very slowly now, testing each step, holding onto trees where she could, but she kept climbing.

    And then the top was level with her head, half a dozen more steps up, the steepest ones of all. Her foot groped in the snow for a safe place. She held a tree very hard, half pulled herself up that step, not trusting the foothold she had found. She did it again. Up here the wind was free; it howled and screamed and blew fine snow before it. The vine maples had been buried already, bent low by the wind, covered by the snow, simple mounds of white.

    She paused, catching her breath, and she knew she had not been able to see over the vines and bushes that day. A shudder passed through her; she slid her foot up another step, moved it until she felt a rock, and then pulled herself up again. The straggly bushes were all gone, all turned into white mounds. Snow blinded her momentarily. She stopped moving, waiting for it to ease up, praying it would ease up. When it did, she moved upward again, and now she was on top.

    The wind shrieked, subsided, shrieked again, at times causing a whiteout, then visibility returned, then another whiteout. She blinked at the log. For a moment it had seemed that there was a figure on it, but she knew it was only snow, piled up behind the log, banked against the cliff face behind it. There was where she had seen Lucas, she heard herself say under her breath. Right there. She felt as if she had entered a dream state where the impossible was routine and no questions were allowed, or even necessary. She had seen Lucas there. She moved onto the ledge uncertainly, afraid of the blizzard wind, afraid of the capricious white outs

    She had to get to her rock, she understood, even if it was just another mound of snow. She also understood that she had to leave this place very soon and get down to warmth. Hypothermia could set in very fast, and she was wet. The wind screamed. She ducked as low as she could and still be able to move and made her way to her rock and sat in the snow on it.

    "I came, Grampa," she said into the wind.

    She could imagine his voice, remember his words in her dream: "It's about time, young lady." She nodded. Yes, about time. Without more thought she stood up and looked about at the landmarks made alien by drifting snow and the blinding wind.

    "Lucas was right here," she said under her breath.

    "And a second later, he was over there, laughing."

    Years ago they had come up here together. They had sat in the sunlight and talked about tomorrows, all their tomorrows.

    They had made love up here, and she had shown him her secret hiding place, the little cave behind the log.

    Moving in the dream state, shielding her face from the wind with her hands, crouching to lessen the target for the wind, she worked her way through the snow to the log and around it where the drift was two feet deep. She had to move the snow away with her hands. There was the round rock that was the doorway to her secret cave. She rolled the rock away and looked in, then reached in and pulled out a plastic bag. Lucas was here, she heard herself saying, and then again, "Lucas was right here!"

    "Stop pushing," Nell said fretfully to her grandfather.

    "I'm moving. Don't push."

    "Come on," Lucas called.

    "Can't catch me!" Laughing, he darted behind a tree.

    She moved her foot another step. But she yearned for rest, to lean against a tree trunk and rest for a minute. No longer than that, just a minute.

    "Grampa, don't push," she moaned when he shoved her from behind; she stumbled, slid in the slush underfoot, and fell, clutching the bag she carried. She hit her cheek on a muddy rock and moaned again, and then rested her forehead against the freezing mud that no longer felt very cold.

    "Come on, up on your feet. Come on, girl, get up!"

    Grampa said roughly.

    Lucas was at her side, still laughing.

    "Hey, remember when we dammed Halleck Creek? Remember I kept saying the water was okay, not a bit cold? I lied, baby. God, was it cold! I could hardly talk because my teeth were chattering so hard."

    She remembered. She had jumped in, finally, and they had wrestled in the frigid shallow water; she had tried to dunk him for pretending it wasn't cold. Lucas took her hand and pulled her upright, along another foot or two;

    Grampa nudged from behind, and suddenly she staggered out from the woods, to where the wind screamed. Lucas dashed water into her face.

    "Don't do that!" she cried.

    "Stop that!" He just laughed and danced out of reach, and she followed.

    "We made it," Grampa said, stamping toward the house. He opened the door and went inside, and Lucas yanked her by the arm until she was inside also.

    "Nell! My God, we've been scared to death. Where were you?"

    Nell ignored the tall black woman who did not belong in her dream state. She watched her grandfather walk through the house, and Lucas was laughing and grabbing at the bag in her arm.

    "Give it to me," he said; she tugged back.

    "You can't have it. It's mine. I found it," she said.

    "Finders keepers."

    "Nell? What happened? Nell!"

    When Nell pulled harder on the plastic bag to keep it away from Lucas, it ripped open and tapes spilled out, clattering on the floor. Diskettes spilled out, too, but she saw only the tapes, Lucas's tapes.

    "I'm sorry," she said, weeping suddenly, her body caught in a violent tremor that she could not stop.

    "I'm sorry." She fell to her knees and tried to scoop the tapes up again, to keep them safe, but hands were on her shoulders, pulling her up, pushing her into a chair. Hands were taking off her soaked clothes; she closed her eyes and let it happen; finally she could rest.

    TWENTY-EIGHT

    "what happened?" barbara asked when Tawna Gresham admitted her to Nell's house an hour later.

    "I don't know. She was gone, and I got worried because the car was here, so I hung around. I was going to call you when she walked in, out of her head, hallucinating, nearly frozen. Doc's with her. I called him. She was crying for you to come, she has something for you."

    Barbara ran up the stairs to Nell's room and stopped at the door. Doc was feeding her, talking in a soothing voice.

    "Come on, open up. You don't want to sleep just yet. First we warm up the insides. That's right, open. There you go." He glanced at Barbara.

    "She'll be all right, just a little too cold." He turned back to Nell.

    "Another spoonful, Nell. Come on."

    Nell was almost completely hidden by covers. Her hair was damp. Barbara backed away from the door and went downstairs again.

    "He's giving her soup or something."

    "Soup," Tawna said.

    "Just broth. Hypothermia, he said. It's a wonder she made it back to the house. Doc came equipped with heating pads and soup. I guess this isn't the first case of hypothermia he's seen."

    "Where are the kids?"

    "Up at the big house with James. He'll give them some dinner and play cards with them for a while."

    Just then Doc came down carrying the bowl.