Authors: Michael Marshall
B
ut Hallam fired first, and Emily jerked back as if she’d been standing on a rear-ended train. Her shot went wide. She lurched past me over the threshold into the kitchen, falling skewed, sliding on the tiles and smacking back into the oven, her bloodied hand caught under her back, the arm breaking audibly as she landed.
“About time,” Barclay said. “Jesus, Rob, what the hell is
wrong
with you?”
I ran to Emily. The bullet had gone through her throat, punching a chunk of it out the other side and splashing blood and tissue across the floor tiles. There was a beat of rawness in her neck before blood started to pump up from inside like a storm wave.
I grabbed her bandaged hand, put it to the wound. “Hold it there,” I said, hoping this was the right thing to do. “Hold it tight.”
She stared up at me. Her chest convulsed, as if something was trying to push its way out of her heart. Not violently, but with firm intent. “Oh,” she said.
It happened again, and with the jerk of her rib cage a gout of blood surged from the mess in her neck.
“Please, Emily,” I said. “Hold it. Hold on.”
Her mouth was moving, but nothing made it out this time except wet clicking sounds.
“Call an ambulance,” I shouted at Hallam. He stood frozen, gun still held out, aghast. “
Get the paramedics.
”
“All units are busy at St. Armands Circle,” Barclay said mildly, as if thinking about other things. “Sorry. Bad break for your girlfriend.”
Emily looked confused. She looked scared. Her eyes were on mine. I thought her left arm was starting to go into spasm, but then realized what she was attempting covertly to do. I slipped my hand along her arm and started trying to prise the gun from fingers that had become locked.
Barclay knew what I was doing. “Aha, now, guns,” he said. “Glad you brought that up. First, there’s no point you going down that road. You’re not going to shoot me.”
I got the gun free from Emily’s hand and stood up.
“Don’t do that, sir,” Hallam said dismally. “Sheriff, I’m going to call the ambulance.”
The weapon felt heavy. It was warm from the sweat and pressure of Emily’s hand. Every single thing I knew about guns had been learned from watching television, and I couldn’t remember any of it. I looked down, however, feeling its heft in my hand, knowing that really I just had to pull the trigger and everything else would follow.
Emily coughed, and made a sound like a rook some distance away in the night.
I looked back at her, but she’d gone.
I’d missed her dying. She went without me watching, without anyone seeing her go. She went alone.
I turned back toward Barclay and thought that maybe I could pull a trigger after all.
“Don’t feel bad,” Barclay said. “Her life was going nowhere fast, trust me. Now, my second gun-related point.” He reached into his jacket. “I found this in the bedroom.” He brought out something and held it out where I could see it clearly. It was a handgun.
Hallam looked at it, then back at me.
“I’ve never seen it before,” I said, straightening. “Deputy, you have to believe me.”
“Hidden under the bed,” Barclay said. “Which is poor. You got a lot to learn, my friend.”
I started to raise Emily’s gun. My hand was shaking badly. Hallam swore, and drew down on me, dropping back into the shooter’s position.
“Mr. Moore, don’t do this,” he said. “I’ve heard what you’ve said. We can talk about it. Come on. Don’t make this situation any worse.”
“The situation’s fucked to hell already. And she was right. This guy knew all about it all along.”
“Mr. Moore, please. Don’t make me do this.”
Barclay raised the gun in his hand and pointed it at me. “Two against one, Mr. Moore.”
“Big—”
I stopped, noticing far too late that the sheriff was wearing surgical gloves.
I moved my finger onto the trigger.
Barclay swung his arm to the side, and fired.
The shot hit Hallam full in the chest. He staggered backward. Barclay fired again, and Hallam fell down.
A
fter a moment, Hallam tried to sit up. Tried to say something. Tried to roll onto his side. None of these came to fruition. He finally managed to turn his face up toward his boss, to start asking a confused question, but he fell back again. I think it took a few minutes for him to die, but basically he was done from that point.
“Are you insane?” I managed to ask, finally. “What . . . what . . . ?”
“That one’s your fault,” Barclay said. “Rob wasn’t the brightest firework in the box, but he was dogged. And honest. You opened the door on a lot of stuff he’d have been
far
better not knowing. You killed him. I hope you’re fucking proud of yourself. I’m godfather to his kid, for crissake.”
I seemed to be in a room with a lunatic from a world in which logic ran at right angles to mine. I took a step backward, barely aware that I still had Emily’s gun in my hand. The movement banged me into a table that Steph had insisted we buy during a weekend up in Cedar Key, the table on which each issue of her magazine was displayed for a week after publication. Last month’s had been knocked to the floor at some point, and stepped on.
“Relax. I’m not going to shoot you, Mr. Moore,” Barclay said. “Least, not unless I have to. I got three dead bodies now, and I need someone to carry the weight for them. That girl in the pool in particular—that was a job of work I don’t want going to waste.”
“You did that? To her?”
“Of course I didn’t. Warner’s other friends put that in motion. They’re in control of this now—and they’re who pulled the plug on this whole mess.”
“What friends? Who are they?”
For just a moment, Barclay looked less seamless, as if I’d pushed him to the edge of what he understood. “Call themselves Straw Men, or something like that, but that’s something I’m happy to say I don’t have a lot of information about. A guy called Paul is in the driver’s seat now. Kind of a disconcerting individual, and not happy that Warner’s game had been going on in the first place. He’d like me to tidy up the loose ends for him. No exceptions. No sir.”
I raised Emily’s gun. “I’m going to shoot you.”
“Jeez, Mr. Moore—no, you’re not. We’ve been over this already. Don’t kid yourself.”
“I . . . will tell people. About everything.”
“You got nothing. Actually, you got less than that.” He held up his gun, turned it round. “This was purchased four days ago in Boynton, using your credit card number—a fake cloned from information your dead girlfriend gave us, when she was working as a waitress at Bo’s.”
I stared at the gun, remembering the morning with Hazel, when Emily/Jane/the waitress went inside to run my card.
“Course, I’ll have to do some work to make it look like you killed her,” Barclay said. “Though it could be Rob did that, in self-defense, when he and I got here together and found what you’d done to the other poor girl in the water. I don’t know. Haven’t figured that out yet. But there’s already a shell from this gun in the head of that mess out there in the pool. So that part’s done.”
“There’s no way,” I said, light-headed. “No
way
you can put all this on me. I’m just a Realtor. How is anyone going to believe I did all this?”
“Happens all the time. Man leads a normal life in some place you’ve never heard of until it’s on constant rotation on the news. Before that, all his friends and neighbors assume the guy’s on the level. Course, they’re the
first
to say, ‘Well, he did seem a little uptight. Maybe almost even
too
normal?’—when it all rains down.”
“No,” I said. “People know me.”
“They thought they did. Plus, there’s a few other bits and pieces of evidence hidden around this house, not to mention at your office at The Breakers. Like I said—it’s been a busy afternoon. The set’s dressed. You got a history now.”
I tried to think of a stronger piece of denial. He watched me come up empty, and smiled. It was a real smile, too. “Run along, Mr. Moore. I’m busy. Got to make it all look just so.”
He watched as I backed toward the front door and opened it. Gave me an encouraging nod of the head, as if in reassurance. I stepped outside slowly, though I’d already started to understand that the man had meant what he said. He wasn’t going to kill me.
Not enough fun.
But then something he had said came back to me. My heart dropped.
No exceptions.
I
ran to my car. I realized I was still holding a gun, threw it onto the passenger seat, then started the car and jammed it in reverse. I had my phone to my ear at the same time as the car swerved backward into the circle road. I pulled the car door shut as I put it into drive and hammered toward the gates.
“Steph,” I said, when they’d put me through. I kept my voice as steady as I could. “I’m on my way to see you, okay? And maybe you should get dressed.”
“Why?” She sounded befuddled.
“Just do it. Do it now, okay? I’ll be there soon.”
I cut the call and drove straight through the gates.
T
he hospital entrance was ringed with ambulances. There were three news crews in position, too, with a reporter I recognized from WWSB standing to one side talking seriously to the camera. I swerved to avoid all this and drove into the main parking lot, finding a space on the far side. It was only after I’d turned off the engine that I processed the fact that my hands were covered in Emily’s blood. My shirt, too.
I got my shirt off and wiped as best I could. It wasn’t good enough. I wrenched myself over the seat, found a sweatshirt in the back, the one I used after the gym. I put that on and then tracked down a half bottle of old, warm mineral water under the passenger seat. Steph was always on my case about not remembering to throw the things in the trash. I was glad of it now. I got out of the car and deployed the water carefully, using the blood-stained shirt to scrub. Some blood had dried under my nails and I couldn’t get it out, but I soon decided I’d spent enough time. Only then did I realize there was blood down my trousers, too. I seemed incapable of seeing anything that wasn’t right in front of my face. And maybe not just recently, either.
I couldn’t do anything about the pants. I’d just have to hope that no one noticed. I shoved the gun into the footwell and dropped the shirt onto it, folding it so the bloodstains didn’t show. I knew I needed to get rid of the weapon, but also felt that I had to do it properly—it would now have my fingerprints on it, making it even easier for Barclay to tell bizarre lies about me.
Usually there’s a crew of die-hard smokers ganged up around the side entrance of hospitals, but either Sarasota Memorial operated a shoot-on-sight policy or they’d migrated around the front to rubberneck current events. On the way up from the house I’d tuned to local radio news but learned little I didn’t already know. One dead from gunfire, two seriously wounded, all other injuries sustained while members of the public tried to escape from danger that would never have even come their way if they’d just sat tight. The police were not yet releasing the names of the dead and wounded. I wondered who was holding the fort down there, with Hallam dead and Barclay focusing on a different business. I considered calling the news station and telling them to send someone to my house, but threw the idea away. I didn’t care what happened about all that. I cared only about the woman inside the building I was running toward.
The ground floor was in barely contained chaos. More newspeople. More paramedics. A lot of people who were presumably friends or relatives of either long-term or recent inhabitants. Raised voices, lots of people talking on cell phones. I dodged into the thickest part of the crowd, hoping the bodies would cover the state of my clothes, trying not to look like the only person with a clear mission. It was slow going, and when I finally got close to the junction near where the bank of elevators stood, I saw I had a further problem. I swore, the crack in my voice startling people nearby.
There were cops all over the corridor. They seemed to be there to limit access to the elevators—presumably to stop newspeople from getting up to the ICU. The cops looked harried and stretched. I assumed these were Sarasota cops, not directly tied to Barclay, but couldn’t be sure. It could have been my imagination, but I thought I saw one of them scanning the crowds, looking for someone in particular. Maybe me. Maybe not.
I faded back into the mass of bodies. I was buffeted by the crowd meanwhile, pushed diagonally back into the hallway I’d just come along. More in hope than expectation I got out my phone and speed-dialed Steph’s cell. I’d called her room before, but maybe . . .
No reply. I turned and started pushing back the other way, seized by an idea.
I
found a stairwell back near the side entrance, with flights going up and down. Nobody was guarding it. I didn’t imagine it would be long before the cops had the sense to plug this hole, so I ran up the stairs as fast as I could.
I burst out of the doors on the third floor and ran along the corridor. I blew straight into the reception area I’d visited that morning—dropping the pace down to fast walk, but still moving fast. There were a lot of doctors and nurses, people talking in hushed tones. Presumably most of the injured were up here in the ICU.
I heard someone else say—“The shooter. Thirty seconds ago. Crash team’s coming up.”
Through the white doors on the other side of the room it was quieter, a few people standing looking through windows in various degrees of unhappy. I ran to the end and yanked open the door to Steph’s room.
The bed was empty.
It was empty and in disarray, however, and the room didn’t look like it had been cleared in preparation for a new patient. Chanting the word
no
under my breath over and over, I darted across and checked the cabinet by the bed. Medicines, a spare gown. And Stephanie’s purse.
So where was she?
Had someone got here before I did?
I couldn’t find any sign of her clothes, which I hoped was a good thing. I ran back into the corridor, nearly colliding with a man in a white coat. Recognition cut in and we swung back to face each other. It was the doctor I’d talked to that morning.
“Where is she?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re asking me?”
“You don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t know—or I wouldn’t be looking for her, would I? I called the hospital half an hour ago. I got put through, so she was here then.”
“I came by your wife’s room ten minutes ago but it was empty. I’ve been all over the floor looking for her.”
“Christ,” I said. “Have you seen anybody up here? Anybody who shouldn’t have been?”
“The entire hospital is full of people who shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Right now nobody has any idea who’s supposed to be here and who’s not.”
He seemed to suddenly clock my level of desperation, and took a mental step back. “But . . . what kind of person would you be talking about, anyway?”
“Never mind. I’ll find her,” I said, starting to back away up the corridor. Putting this guy on high alert wasn’t going to make anything easier. “Sure she’s just gone for a walk. She’s like that, hates being cooped up. If you find her, tell her to stay put, okay? Tell her I’m coming.”
“I will. Her condition’s improving, but there’s work to do. She needs more treatment, right away.”
“Gotcha.” I’d stopped listening by then—this guy had no idea of the real level of danger Steph was in, jeopardy that had nothing to do with the contents of a wine bottle—and hurried out into the reception area.
There was no point hurtling randomly around the hospital, however: run in the wrong direction and you’re getting farther away from where you need to be. Much though I wanted to keep myself in constant movement, to be doing something, I had to stop and think first.
Assume no one had come for her.
I had to assume this. If I started to think otherwise, then I was too late and nothing I did could make any difference. I couldn’t bear to go down that road.
So then, assume she moved herself.
This was a woman who’d been poisoned. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually been told this, or if she’d properly absorbed the fact, but half an hour ago she’d received a semihysterical (or at least throttled and intense) phone call from her husband, telling her to get dressed. Thinking, “Okay, that’s weird, but he seems serious,” she does what he asks. He takes longer to arrive than she expects (I’d driven up from the house as fast as I could, but evening traffic stopped me from hammering it all the way). So she gets twitchy. She can’t sit there in her room fully dressed, either, because a nurse could come in and read the riot act, ask what the hell she’s doing, and insist she get back into bed like a good patient. So she takes herself for a walk around the ward or the floor, to wait for me, catch me as soon as I arrive.
I liked that version. I certainly preferred it to the scenario in which someone got there before me.
I wasn’t sure what it meant I should do next, though. The doctor said he’d looked around the floor. How thoroughly? He’d presumably only been looking in the areas a patient might normally be expected to go (restrooms, the snack machines) and wouldn’t have checked every nook and cranny. A hospital would have a
lot
of nooks and crannies. Did I have time to check them all—when Steph might not even be on this floor?
The area around the nurse’s station was less crowded now. Someone was getting a grip on the situation, and one of the nurses gave me a hard stare as I passed, as if to check I was legitimate. I wasn’t sure what the answer was. It seemed like everyone was looking at everyone suspiciously, and for a moment I was seized by the vertiginous conviction that
nobody
was here legitimately, that everybody was involved in something I didn’t understand—the nurses, orderlies, supposed patients, and alleged relatives. That any single one of them could have stashed Steph’s body in a cupboard and be enjoying the spectacle of me spinning around searching for her; that any of them could have a gun in their jacket or purse or white coat and be waiting for the most apposite or entertaining moment to drop me, to general applause. Maybe it was a competition. Maybe this was all just a set, and everyone in it actors and extras. Maybe it had always been that way, everywhere in the world, and I was the only person who hadn’t known.
I did a fast tour around the floor and came up empty. Toward the end it occurred to me that she
might
have gone down to the exit on the ground floor and be waiting there. It occurred to me that this might even be the most likely explanation—Steph was sharp, good at cutting to what-happens-next—and that I was a total moron for not having thought of this in the first place.
I didn’t want to take the elevator down into the middle of the cop zone, so I went back to the far stairwell and clattered down that instead. I knew Steph hadn’t been at the north doors—or at least that she hadn’t been there ten minutes ago, because that’s the way I’d come in. Within a few minutes I’d established she wasn’t at the east doors, either.
Which left only the main entrance. I was going to have to go that way regardless.
I drifted quickly past the corridor that led to it. This area was less hectic now, though there remained a knot of people down at the end, including at least one person who looked like a reporter. I didn’t know whether Steph would have thought being surrounded by people was a good or a bad thing. She’d been very foggy when I saw her that morning, and I doubted the intervening time would have been enough to clear her head. I should have given her a better idea of what I’d been afraid of. I should have laid it out for her. It would have been easier to predict what she might do if I knew she understood.
I tried calling her cell again. As it rang I realized I was close to hyperventilating and tried to calm myself down.
Suddenly I heard her voice in my ear, querulous, dislocated. “Bill?”
“Steph? Where
are
you?”
“Cafeteria. Are . . . are you here yet?”
“Yes, I’m here at the hospital,” I said. “I’m here. It’s all good. Why . . . are you in the cafeteria?”
“I want everything to be right. And now is the time, yes? You always say that. Now is always the best time for action. Tomorrow starts now.”
“Steph—what are you talking about?” I was in movement again, searching the walls for signs, trying to find a map of the hospital. “Wanted
what
to be right?”
“Everything.” She sounded confused but determined, as if trying to piece complex matters together in a mind that wasn’t up to it. “He called, five minutes after you. And I thought it didn’t mean anything. It was just dumb. I was mad at you, that’s all. So sort it out.”
“
Who
called, honey?” I finally found a map and located the cafeteria on it—it was at the other end of the hospital. I got my bearings and started to hurry in that direction. “Who are you talking about?”
“You know,” she said reluctantly. “He said we should meet, talk. And I thought, yes, get it done. Wasn’t anything, anyway. I’m so sorry.”
And then I got it. “
Nick’s
here?”
Nick—a man who’d started working at her office six weeks before, around about the time this whole thing had started to be put in motion. Who’d just happened to run into my wife last night downtown. Who’d now called her to arrange a meeting, just a few minutes after I’d run from my house, and from Barclay, who doubtless had a phone and could have made a call.
“Yes.”
“Is he there with you now?”
“Getting coffees. He wanted to go somewhere else, but I said no way, my husband’s coming to see me. I’m staying right here in the hospital. I said that.”
“That’s right. That was a good thing to say. Stay there, Steph. Don’t move. Don’t drink anything he gives you. Do
not
go anywhere with him.”
I started to run.