Stone Quarry (29 page)

Grice's voice blared from the speaker on MacGregor's car. "You've got thirty seconds, folks. Come down, everyone can leave but Jimmy. How about it?"

"Do it, for Chrissake!" Jimmy said again.

Lydia and I exchanged a look that MacGregor caught, and MacGregor understood it. For the first time, he grinned. "Fuck you!" he yelled over the rock, and his words echoed in the dusty air.

"What's happening?" I asked Lydia. I struggled to sit up straighter, as though it would help me think.

"They're moving the Ford around this way. I can't get a shot."

But they could. As the Ford's engine shut off, a barrage of gunfire from our right almost hid the sounds of someone scrabbling up the rock. Lydia whipped around, fired where she couldn't see. Sudden silence; then a shot from behind her, the side MacGregor had climbed. She answered that, too, and then the Winchester was empty and Ted's sneering face appeared behind a Luger where the first shots had come from.

He swung the barrel of the gun to Jimmy, who was frozen, pressed against the rock; but before Ted could fire, MacGregor tackled him. They fell, struggled, tumbled down the rocks out of sight. Then a shot. Then nothing.

Lydia had reloaded. Suddenly we were fired on from both sides. Lydia shot again, twice, looked at me with frightened eyes. There was nothing I could give her. She shook herself, reloaded again, and as she did, a siren screamed and tires crunched and car doors slammed and a voice I had never been glad to hear before hollered, "Give it up, Grice! I got two more cars on the way!"

Shots screamed from our right, and two or three from ahead, near the shack. Lydia crept forward to the cleft shed been shooting from before, craned her neck. She yelled, "Sheriff, on your left!" She stood to get an angle, fired down the face of the rock.

Then, at the whine of another shot, she jerked, lost her footing, fell hard against the rock. She didn't get up, didn't move.

"Oh, Jesus, no," I heard myself plead. I was dimly aware of Jimmy grabbing the rifle, more shots, then silence, sudden and total. I saw nothing but Lydia's face. "Lydia, please," I whispered. "Please."

The silence ended, broken by shouting voices, slamming car doors, a confusion of smaller sounds. Through it all, Lydia's pale, still face.

"Antonelli, you bastard!" I heard Brinkman yell. "I'm coming up there. You gonna shoot me?"

"No," Jimmy answered, but it came out as a whisper, so he had to say it again: "No!"

"Stand up—where I can see you!"

Jimmy did, leaning the rifle against a rock, showing the cops below his hands were empty. Grunts and curses as Brinkman hauled himself up the rock pile. He appeared from behind a boulder like Godzilla coming to crush a city.

"Well," he drawled, with the mean little smile. "Don't you two look like shit."

Lydia groaned, moved her hand a little in the dirt.

"Help her!" I looked from Brinkman to Jimmy. "Jesus, help her!"

"Yeah," said Brinkman. He dropped to one knee, bent over Lydia. "Calm down, city boy. Nothing wrong with her. Just a bump on the head. I got the Rescue Squad coming."

"Sheriff," a voice called from below, "two of these guys are alive."

"Yeah?" Brinkman yelled back. "Which two?"

"The one with the cast. And Ron MacGregor."

Lydia groaned, stirred. "Don't move, little girl. You'll be fine," Brinkman told her.

Lydia's eyelids fluttered, opened. "Little girl," she murmured. "I'll kill you."

"It'd be a waste," Brinkman said. "You saved my life. Now just don't you move." He took off his jacket, covered her with it. He swiveled to face me, said, "You know, city boy, you look a hell of a lot worse than she does. Who has the key?"

I had no idea what he meant.

"The cuffs. The key to the cuffs."

I tried to remember. "Arnold."

"Arnold Shea? The big guy?"

"Yes."

Brinkman narrowed his eyes at Jimmy, smiled a little smile. "He's stretched out there by your van, Jimmy, deader'n hell. Go get the key off him. For your buddy here."

Jimmy swallowed hard, turned, climbed down off the mound of rock.

"You didn't have to do that, Brinkman." I coughed, closed my eyes.

"I like to see that kid sweat," he said. "Now how about you telling me what went on here?"

"Later," I said, my voice sounding distant, even to me.

Chapter 21

MacGregor died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

After Brinkman had unlocked my handcuffs, he
’
d told Jimmy to get me down to the cruiser, where it was warm. He moved Lydia there also, laying her on the back seat while I slumped in the front, and we were there like that until the ambulance came; but before that, after I had worked my way down the rocky mound with Jimmy's hand tight on my numb arm, I had crouched by MacGregor, motionless in the dust.

Brinkman's fat deputy had covered MacGregor with a blanket from the cruiser. There was blood on the blanket. MacGregor's face was ash gray and his breathing was shallow, ragged.

I spoke his name. His eyes opened. "Smith."The corners of his mouth moved weakly. "I guess no trout this spring, huh?"

"Summer," I said. "They'll be bigger by then, anyhow."

"Yeah." His face contorted with pain. He said, hoarsely, "I wouldn't have done it, you know." He gestured toward Jimmy with his eyes. "If you'd left it alone, I'd have found a way to let him off. I knew it was a frame. I wouldn't've let it happen."

I had no way to tell if that was true, but MacGregor's gray eyes were locked onto mine, and I said, "I know, Mac. I know."

His eyes closed. I saw him struggling to keep them open, not to lose yet.

"Take it easy," I said. "They've got an ambulance coming."

I tried to find something else to say, but there was nothing. Jimmy tugged gently on my arm, and I stood, my eyes stinging in the cold gray light.

The "later" I had promised Brinkman happened in the outpatient department of the hospital in Cobleskill. Lydia was in a room upstairs. Brinkman had been right: she had a concussion, not serious. Prognosis excellent. I'd waited until they could tell me that before I let them take me down the hall and put four stitches next to my left eye. I lay now on a bed in a curtained-off stall in Outpatient because, although they'd made a room ready for me upstairs too, I had refused to be admitted. The doctor who'd sewn me up, a round man named Mazzeo, popped in every ten minutes to tell me a man in my condition couldn't leave the hospital.

"You can't drive," he pointed out, a pudgy finger smoothing his thick mustache. "You probably can't even see straight. You have a headache to beat the band, am I right? And your hands won't be much good for hours."

I flexed my swollen fingers. The numbness was receding slowly, leaving the billion pinpricks of returning circulation behind. My wrists were bruised, red and purple under the icepacks that wrapped them.

"No," I said. "I'm leaving." I didn't try for anything else. I knew that I couldn't argue with him, but I also knew I wasn't staying. Everything here was sharp and bright, and outside the curtain I could hear voices and footsteps and the sounds of endless activity. There was no peace here, no darkness, no silence. No music. I couldn't stay.

Immediately after the third or fourth of Dr. Mazzeo's disapproving visits the curtains parted again and Brinkman stood smiling and very tall next to the bed. "Shit," he said, took his hat off. "I brought in four corpses today, Smith, and they all looked better than you do."

"Go to hell."

"Christ! For a man whose life I saved, you're an ornery son of a bitch."

"Yeah," I said. "I always was." I paused, went on, "But I owe you for that, Brinkman. And for Lydia and Jimmy."

"So pay up, city boy. What the hell's going on around here, and how come I shouldn't lock you up, you and Jimmy and that china doll of yours?" He dropped his hat on the bed, pulled a stool close.

I turned my pounding head carefully, groped with thick fingers for the button that would raise the bed. Brinkman vertical and me horizontal was bad odds to start with.

I tilted the bed as upright as it would go, and then I asked Brinkman to find me some water. By the time he got back I'd found a way to tell it, very close to the truth.

"Ginny Sanderson," I said, after a drink.

"Snotty little bitch," he drawled. "What about her?"

That jolted me; but then I realized he didn't know.

"She's dead, Brinkman. Grice killed her."

Nothing moved but his eyes. They narrowed into slits. "The hell you say."

I drank more water, spoke slowly. "She wanted to be part of Grice's in-crowd. But Grice wasn't having any. She thought it was her, so she tried harder. She took up with Jimmy; she robbed a house."

"Robbed what house?" Brinkman interrupted.

"Eve Colgate's."

"Miss Colgate didn't report that."

"No," I said. "She called me instead."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "Some people aren't crazy about cops." "Smith—"

"Oh, Christ, Brinkman, will you shut up and let me finish? Let me get through this, then you can arrest me or shoot me or whatever the fuck you want."

His face darkened, and I wondered briefly whether it was beyond him to beat up a man lying in a hospital bed. Maybe I'd get to find out.

Meanwhile, I went on. "I traced the burglary to Ginny pretty easily. She denied it, but sooner or later she'd have come across. But there was a wrinkle: some of the stuff she'd stolen was really valuable. She thought Grice would be impressed with that, so she showed him. He wasn't."

Brinkman asked through gritted teeth, "Why not?"

"Well, he was, but it was hard stuff to fence. And Grice had a sweetheart deal going with her father. He didn't want to blow that by getting caught fooling around with her."

"Grice? You're telling me Frank Grice was making deals with Mark Sanderson?"

"Uh-huh. Based on blackmail, I think."

"Blackmail over what?"

"The murder of Lena Sanderson."

"The
what
? Jesus, city boy, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"When Lena disappeared," I said, "Sanderson called the cops, it's true; but it would've looked too odd if he hadn't. But he didn't hire anyone to look privately, after you guys turned up nothing. Okay, so maybe he figured good riddance. But he also didn't cancel her credit cards. He didn't close bank accounts she had access to. He never filed for a legal separation. He didn't make any effort to protect himself from her. All I can figure is he knew he didn't have to."

"You're saying—"

"I think Sanderson killed her. Either that, or he hired Grice to do it; but my money's on him. In anger; probably by accident. She played around one too many times; the whole county was full of it, from what I hear, but it took him forever to catch on.

"Then I'll bet he lost his nerve. He called Grice. They knew each other: Grice did muscle work for Sanderson. So Sanderson calls. I've got this body in my living room, get rid of it. No problem, Grice gets rid of it. And suddenly Grice is a big shot. He's running the county. Sanderson buys him a cop, Sanderson buys him information, and he and Sanderson go into business together."

Brinkman's eyes were hard, his mouth tight with anger. I thought he was going to tell me to shove my theories, but when he spoke, it was to ask, "What business?"

"Appleseed Holdings." I told him about that.

Brinkman sat silent for a while when I was through, then stood abruptly. "City boy," he said, "the Sandersons fought under George Washington. When that war was over they came up here and settled this county. My county, Smith. Now you want me to believe Mark Sanderson murdered his wife and bends over for Frank Grice?" He shook his head. "I don't know, city boy. I don't know."

"I don't give a shit what you believe, Brinkman. I'm telling you what happened. A real cop would check it out."

"A—" His hand curled into a fist, but he said, "Ginny. You're so fucking smart, what about Ginny?"

I told him about Ginny, Wally Gould, Frank Grice. He asked what it was Ginny had stolen that was so valuable, and I told him the only lie I had for him: "I don't know."

After a long silence, he asked, "Where are they?"

It took me a moment; then I caught on. "The bodies? I'll bet you'll find them if you drag the quarry."

Brinkman looked at me long and hard, his small eyes like a cold, close weight, stones on my chest. "All right," he said at last. "I'll check it out. Otis Huttner's still alive; I'll see what he has to say. And I'll drag the quarry. And you'd better be right, Smith. You'd better be right, or you're fucked."

He turned and strode out, the curtain closing behind him.

I was right, I knew I was. The part about Lena Sanderson was theory, but it fit too well to be wrong. I thought about Mark Sanderson, what it would be like for him when

Brinkman faced him with the two bodies in the quarry, the one he knew about and the one he didn't.

I was grateful for the emptiness of the room after Brinkman was gone. I'd worked hard to give him what he'd needed to know, but to hold back the one part I'd told no one. I hadn't been sure I could do it. In the end I had, but the exhaustion I felt now, alone in the curtained alcove, was in my nerves, my muscles, and bones, a tiredness so deep I was, finally, unable to move.

I lay back, my eyes closed, prepared to sur
render whenever Dr. Mazzeo bust
ed back in. I slept for a while; then I heard the metallic slide of the curtain rings. I opened my eyes to see Eve Colgate pulling the curtain shut.

I reached out my hand. She took it, smiling slightly. "Well," she said, "you don't look as bad as A1 Mazzeo said you did."

"I don't feel as bad as he says I do."

"How do you feel?"

"Battered." A thought hit me. "Jesus, you've been here all day, haven't you?"

She nodded. "I was stranded. Lydia was supposed to call me. I waited until afternoon. When I hadn't heard from her, I called the state troopers. Was it they who found you?

"Sort of," I said. That must have been why MacGregor had reached the quarry so fast after Jimmy's call came over the CB. He'd been on his way to Franklinton, to the green house. He'd known right where to head for when Eve told him Lydia and I had gone off radar.

"How's Tony?" I asked Eve.

"Improving. He was awake for a while. He asked for you. He's anxious to talk to you. But he doesn't know who shot him."

"Arnold Shea," I said. "He's dead."

"Bill, what's going on? What happened to Lydia? The sheriff's men won't tell me anything."

"Lydia'll be okay. A concussion, not serious. And it's all over, Eve."

"What do you mean, over? What happened? What's happening?"

"You're safe. You always were; you weren't the target. I'll tell you about it. And I think I know where your paintings are."

She was speechless for a moment, her clear eyes widening. "Do you?" she asked. "Do you?"

"I think so. If I'm right, I'll get them in the morning."

"Where? Who has them?"

"I don't want to tell you, in case I'm wrong." I wasn't wrong, but the whole story was something I hoped she would never know. "But Eve, I need a favor."

"What do you need?"

"A ride. The doctor wants me to stay here. I want to leave. But he says I can't drive yet and I know that's right."

She hesitated. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Yes."

Another hesitation, then an ironic smile. "All right. But what am I supposed to use for a car?"

"Oh," I said. "A car." I thought. "Mine's at the Appleseed plant. Lydia's is at Grice's condo."

"Yours is closer. I'll call a cab."

"Is the cab company still open?"

"They're open until eight. It's only four-thirty."

"Four-thirty? Jesus."

I'd thought midnight, at least.

When Eve was gone I got gingerly out of bed. I dressed, moving very carefully. At first I was light-headed, clutching the door frame for support until a wave of dizziness passed, but I was feeling more solid by the time I got to the admissions desk to check out. After I did that I asked for Lydia's room number, bought myself a cup of coffee, and rode the elevator to the second floor.

In Lydia's room the lights were out, leaving the room to settle softly into the
purple dusk. I stood silentl
y by the bed, sipped my coffee, watched the bedclothes rise and fall with the gentle rhythm of Lydia's breathing. The white bandage around her head made her features look delicate, her face small and vulnerable. She'd hate to know I was even thinking that.

When my coffee was almost gone Lydia's eyelids fluttered, opened, closed again.

"Bill?" Her voice was faint.

"I'm here."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"Thank God," she breathed. "Now go to hell."

"Lydia—"

"Passwords, for God's sake." I leaned to hear her better. "'It's only a game.' I almost broke my neck climbing down that cliff. You smell like a brewery."

"Distillery."

"Go to hell," she whispered again.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"No, you're not. You're standing there thinking how very clever you are, how you managed to save everybody after all."

Not everybody, I thought. In the twilight I saw MacGregor's ashen face.

I stood silent, not knowing what to say. She was silent too, and for a while I thought she was asleep. Then, her eyes still closed, she slipped her hand from beneath the blanket, found mine. I closed my tingling fingers around her small, soft ones. "Bill?"

"It's okay. You'll be okay."

The sky outside the window faded slowly to black. I stood holding Lydia's hand until the soft rhythm of her breathing told me she was asleep again, and for a long time after that.

When I left Lydia I took the elevator again, this time to the third floor, to Tony's room. In here the lights were on, but Tony was asleep, his face pale and, even in sleep, reflecting pain.