“And it wasn’t till after talking with him that I faxed an update to my lawyer.”
“Sure you did.”
“You should believe her. Clete likes to go first-class— there must be a state-of-the-art computer somewhere in the club, with
all the add-ons. Let’s go call Val’s computer and check it out. You can read exactly what she faxed her lawyer.”
“You’re telling me she had names? Not mine, I don’t think. I’ll worry about lawyers and faxes later. Right now it’s what she
asked Chauncy that we need to do something about.”
“What did he do—get off the phone with me and right back on it with Thurman?”
“Chauncy was very upset by your implication. He called me for reassurance.” Thurman had come out of the building to take up
position a little behind Kyle and to his left. His was a handgun. In an odd way, I was glad to see him. When Calvin said they
couldn’t find him that afternoon I’d wondered uneasily if the disappearance had been of his own choosing. Thurman as killer
was still hard to believe. “Naturally we worried how you’d handle what you’d learned. It seemed too hypothetical at that stage
to cause much damage, so I assumed you’d try to establish some sort of corroboration. It wasn’t hard to guess how. Then when
Kyle didn’t see either of you at the wake …”
“It took you a while to show up,” Kyle said smugly. “Must be half an hour Thurman’s been sitting in there with his finger
on the switch for those floods.”
So maybe they hadn’t monitored how we’d arrived, merely set up shop where they knew we’d be bound to come. If so, they had
no idea Calvin was with us. “Did you manage to placate Chauncy?” I asked conversationally.
“I could at least assure him Mariah’s answering-machine tape no longer exists. With that, he’s willing enough to deny talking
to you. Chauncy would abhor being dragged into a scandal. I’ve lost the friendship, of course. Along with … Val, it never
had to get this far. All we ever wanted was for you to stay away from here. Every time those azaleas started acting up I was
sure you must be suspecting—”
“Maybe I would have, if I hadn’t left the soil analysis to the expert. You figured killing somebody in my front yard and setting
me up for it would keep me away. Like in jail?”
“The evidence was too circumstantial for you to be convicted.” He sounded like I’d just wronged him.
“I damn well might have been indicted.”
“Not with your alibi.”
“But you weren’t expecting me to have one. You—” Now that there were specific targets for my anger, I felt like a volcano
unplugging. The extent to which these two men had been casually willing to screw up my life …
“It was two birds with one stone,” Kyle said matter-of-factly. “And I owed you one, for messing around with my brother-in-law.
We had to make our move. How long was that little asshole going to be satisfied with five thou a month, even assuming we were
willing to go on paying? And we couldn’t let you keep poking around out here. If you’d told Eleanor and Rodney to eat their
contract this spring like Skip Boyles did, you wouldn’t be having this problem.”
“Oh, right, it was all my fault. Jesus, Kyle. If that’s an example of your life view, no wonder your wife split.”
Baxter gave me a little shake of his head. Like we really want to go around provoking people with guns trained on us. “What
did you do, give your security force the night off for the wake?” he asked calmly.
“Our gate people are right where we pay them to be,” Kyle assured us. “Hank, who’d normally be at the monitoring board, has
been complaining of a cold. Thurman didn’t feel up to the wake, especially with your men wanting to talk to him, so he came
out here about seven and told Hank to go on home. He was happy to.”
“You’ve got us to yourselves, then. Until you fire one of those guns and attract the men from the gatehouses.”
“Their instructions are to wait to be summoned, no matter what they hear. All things considered, I’ll test that out some other
time. After we shoot you I’ll rush in and call them up here. We wouldn’t want there to be anything suspicious about the timing.”
“Not with so much else to be suspicious about,” Baxter agreed, matching his confident tone.
“Aren’t you lucky that’ll be my problem, not yours?” With that the rifle, which had been pointing at a sort of all-purpose
position between the two of us started swinging around to Baxter.
“Kyle, wait!” I yelled.
“For what?”
Damned if I knew. Anyhow, the shots that broke out came from the opposite direction. Calvin wasn’t bad. One shot, one floodlight.
There came a flurry of shots after that, in the midst of which a second light exploded. The third remained functional but
at a different angle; now it harmlessly illuminated the wall.
This was an after-the-fact assessment of his shooting; when all the noise erupted I dove for cover. A patch of grass kicked
up very close to where I’d been standing, and I felt something almost like a shove as I ducked behind a tight grouping of
rhododendrons. The gunfire kept coming, but soon from only one gun and one direction. Either Calvin had gotten hit, or he
was afraid of catching us in the crossfire. I’d lost track of Baxter, and I kept wondering why Thurman’s gun wasn’t joining
in. If either he or Kyle had brought a semiautomatic weapon, they could have methodically sprayed us to death, but as it was,
the action took on a stop-and-go quality. Working farther from my original position, I quickly learned to love Kyle’s pauses
for reloading.
My intention of heading back toward Calvin was abruptly torpedoed when Thurman—I could see the shadow of the long pole he’d
used—managed to get the remaining light angled around again. It didn’t illuminate the whole area, but no way could I get from
where I was to the relative safety of Calvin’s clump of forsythia without making myself a prime target. There were only three
ways off the plateau: the stairs we’d come up, the access road, and the golf course tunnel. The first I couldn’t reach and
the second and third would be death traps even if I managed to get there.
Baxter had ended up well to my right, almost to the parking lot—I finally noticed his arm waving me over there. Thurman’s
handgun was in business now. Could it do much damage from such a distance? I had no idea, or any craving to find out. Crawling
when the cover was less than wonderful, trying to move while at least one of the shooters was reloading, I worked my way toward
Baxter. It felt wonderful to have company.
“Now what?” I whispered. “We break for the parking lot, crouch behind the wall, and work our way over toward the stairs?”
“That way’s out—the cover’s too poor on the slope. They could stay up here and pick us off before we got far enough away.
No, what we’re going to do is run like hell diagonally across the parking lot, then jump onto and off that wall and into the
quarry pond.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“It’s plenty deep. We always used to make it.”
“You were a bunch of dumb teenagers. And not as high up. There’s no way I can do this.”
“You have to, Val. They assume they’ve got us pinned in this area. If we stay up here it oughtn’t to take them more than twenty
minutes, tops, to flush us, and I plan on knowing you a lot longer than that. So before they can work their way any closer
we make a break for it—” He gave me a none-too-gentle shove. “Now!”
We created enough motion to draw a shot, which turned out to be the incentive I needed to embark on that crazy run. Once into
it, stopping was even more unthinkable than our destination. If there should come a time in my life when I want to invoke
how it feels to be terrified, all I’ll have to do is roll that scene.
Technically it must have been over quickly, even at my running speed, but my memory insists on playing it footfall by footfall.
Baxter, with a fractionally later start, easily overtook me. Surely he could’ve been off the wall before I got there but he
hung around waiting to give me a hand up. “Jump out as far as you can, exhale when you hit the water. Don’t fight it when
you go under—you’ll pop back up.” I clearly remember his instructions.
Eyes glued shut, I jumped. It’s the kind of thing you’ll never volunteer to do if you think about it, so I didn’t pause to
get set, just went with whatever momentum was left from the run. With the backpack giving my hunched-together body an extra
dimension, I must have become an instant legend to whatever wildlife happened to be looking up.
I have no idea how long the descent took. When you figure it constitutes the rest of your life, you’re in no great hurry for
even the most appalling experience to be over.
It did end, of course, I presume with a mighty splash, though I don’t remember that. It was just suddenly very wet and incredibly
cold. In my panic I forgot about exhaling and had no idea whether I kept going down, down, down or if I was purposelessly
roiling around somewhere below the surface. Why was I still wearing the damn backpack; hadn’t I better shed it? Underwater,
I couldn’t make my shoulders and arms execute the right motions. Because, contrary to instructions, I was fighting it. I had
to stop, had to make myself as straight as possible, hopefully on an up-down orientation, and …
I wouldn’t describe what happened after that as shooting to the surface, but the sensation did definitely become one of rising.
And then suddenly, wondrously, I was taking in air, not water. Maybe ten feet away Baxter’s head was showing. “Make for the
nearest shore where there are trees” came his terse command. “We’ll need cover. And ditch that damn backpack—it’ll slow you
down.”
Not enough to matter, I thought as I oriented myself and started swimming. In water, as on land, my assets are strength and
endurance. I won’t win races, but I will finish them. Making good, steady progress, I’d covered maybe a third of the distance
when the first shot sounded from above. I turned to look for Baxter, who I supposed had been right behind me. He was not far
from where he’d started out. Treading water to watch, I could see why: his left arm was not working.
I started back toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are you shot, or what?”
“Keep your voice down. One of them got lucky and clipped my shoulder. Val, turn around and keep going. I’ll take a while but
I’ll make it.”
“Right.” It felt longer, going back—the coldness of the water, maybe. “I don’t remember the damn lifesaving carry. I think
if the victim resists you’re supposed to knock them out or choke them or something. So why don’t you just grab on to that
side strap on the backpack? I steer, we both paddle.”
He didn’t argue, and after getting the feel of the extra resistance, I didn’t have to keep looking if he was still on board.
For a while, the shooting kept up at a sort of leisurely pace, like every minute or so there’d be a report. At a couple of
them, I could see the water kick up not far away. Then there was almost a fanfare of sounds, a fusillade, echoing into stillness.
“We’re still afloat?” I turned to ask Baxter.
“Just keep swimming” came the response.
Did the ensuing silence constitute a welcome change? Not as it turned out. The shooting had been an incentive to keep going.
With its cessation I became aware of how cold and tired I was. For the longest time, I couldn’t make the shoreline look significantly
closer.
Once in a while it pays off, big-time, to be overenergized and innately stubborn, capable of knowing nothing better, mentally
or physically, than to plow ahead. Because there came a time when I checked our bearings and the shore wasn’t so far away
and I knew we could reach it.
Naturally, we didn’t come aground where there was anything so useful as a graded beach. Rocks were what we had to negotiate.
Slimy rocks. Once Baxter got a handhold with his good arm, I maneuvered myself free of the backpack and flung it as far as
I could onto the land. I only slipped back a couple of times, clambering up. After I helped Baxter onto the shore we lay sprawled
there for a while, too spent to speak. That close to the pond there were only scattered low bushes, but with nothing bombarding
us from the plateau and no one leaning out over the wall I felt temporarily safe.
“Let me see your shoulder,” I roused myself to ask.
We both looked. Mother Nature’s darkness is still a long way from pitch black. Once you adjust to the dim light it’s surprising
how well you can see in it at close range. There wasn’t much showing of Baxter’s wound—a hole in the front of the sleeve an
inch or so down from shoulder height, and I found another hole at the rear, a little higher. “The bullet went on through,
then,” he said, sounding relieved. “It looks like being in that cold water stopped the bleeding.” He made an experimental
motion, winced. “But I can’t use it.”
“Don’t try, then,” I said sharply, worrying what we’d do if it started bleeding heavily.
“Yes, ma’am. Okay. Whatever they’re up to now they can’t have us in sight. Still, let’s mosey on over under those trees to
work out our logistics.”
Standing, I reached over and started to hoist the backpack.
“You’re not going to haul that along.”
I looked at it wistfully and let out a laugh. “I guess not. But from this neat little round hole I just stuck my finger into,
I’m kind of glad I hauled it this far.”
We worked our way several trees deep into the new-growth woods that began about twenty feet from the shore of the pond. They
wouldn’t be much protection in daylight, but in the dark, even staring at the right spot, you’d probably have to get lucky
to pick up movement.
“Back when we used to come here, it was no big deal to hike from the pond out to the base of that old track we took up Crane
Hill. After all the land moving they’ve done, how big a deal is it now?”
“Remember me saying how they’d landscaped to keep people from getting into this area? Scenic but inaccessible was the idea.
If Hudson Heights is Clete’s castle, we’re in the dungeon.”
“We’ve got to get out of it well before daylight if we don’t want to become permanent residents. They’ll be calling in reinforcements—that’s
probably why they left off shooting. From what I remember of the big map, it would be iffy for two people to try and keep
us penned down here. Four or five people, now—”