Usher's Passing (61 page)

Dunstan could swivel his chair around, Rix retrieved the key ring. "All right, damn you!" Rix said fiercely. "Now I'll see it for myself!" He strode toward the corridor and the door to the basement.

Thunder crashed near the house. Rix heard the clang of metal against metal, and twisted around.

Dunstan was coming at him in the wheelchair, the fireplace poker raised in his hand. Still, Dunstan's face was remote, expressionless. He was moving like a machine on wheels.

"Come on!" Rix said incredulously. "What the hell do you think you're—"

The poker flashed downward in a vicious arc. Rix reacted too slowly, and was struck hard on the shoulder. Pain coursed through his arm, and he staggered backward.

Dunstan swung again. Rix ducked to one side, and the poker narrowly missed his skull.

"Stop it!" Rix shouted. The old man had lost his mind! Before Dunstan could lift the poker again, Rix grasped the chair's armrests to shove him across the floor—but Dunstan's free hand clamped around his wrist like an iron manacle.

The dead eyes stared up into Rix's face. "I won't show my book to anyone," he repeated, in a hoarse and strangled voice. He brought the poker up for another blow. Rix grabbed at it, throwing his weight against the side of the chair. It tipped over, spilling Wheeler Dunstan onto the floor. Lifting himself on his powerful forearms, Dunstan began to drag himself after Rix.

Stunned, Rix retreated before him. Dunstan pulled himself forward, his face still set and glistening with sweat. Rix backed away, into the corridor. The door to the basement was only a few feet away. He went through it and down the ramp as Dunstan gave a guttural cry.

In the clutter of Dunstan's office, Rix realized the original manuscript could be hidden anywhere. There was no way to find it without tearing the place apart—but the word processor was still on, and displayed on the green-glowing screen was what Dunstan had been writing before Rix had interrupted him.

Rix approached the desk, shoving aside a stack of papers to get a good look.

What he saw brought a dazed half-laugh, half-moan from his throat.

There was one paragraph:
Time will tell the tale. There will always be war, and someone will always make the weapons.

Time will tell the tale. The Usher name is a deterrent to war. Time will tell the tale.

The paragraph was repeated over and over, in various combinations of sentences. With a trembling hand, Rix pressed the terminal's key that scrolled the screen down. It obeyed, and Rix read the essence of the Usher family history that Dunstan had been writing for six years.

The Usher name is a deterrent to war. Time will tell the tale. There will always be war, and someone will always make the weapons. Time will tell the tale.

It went on and on, page after page.

"Oh Jesus," Rix whispered.

There was no book. There had never been a book. Wheeler Dunstan was insane. Had he come down here, day after day for six years, and thought he was writing a complete manuscript?

There will always be war, and someone will always make the weapons. Time will tell the tale—

Rix ran from the basement and up the ramp, his heart hammering so loudly he could hardly think. In the parlor, the wheelchair still lay on its side, but the man had crawled away. The poker was on the floor, near the notebook Rix had dropped. He picked the book up. Outside, thunder crashed and rain began to slam against the roof. Within seconds, a downpour started that was so dense he couldn't see his car through the bay windows.

As Rix neared the front door, he saw Dunstan lying on his face on the floor, his arms curled beneath his body. To leave the house, Rix would have to pass him. Dunstan's body suddenly trembled, and then he slowly turned his face toward Rix.

Dunstan's eyes had rolled back in his head, showing only the bloodshot whites. Sweat gleamed on his pallid cheeks and forehead. His mouth gasped for air, then formed barely intelligible words: "I won't . . . show my book . . . to anyone."

He brought his right hand up from under his body. In it was an Usher .357 Commando.

Rix leaped to one side as the gun went off. A fist-sized hole spouted shards of wood from the parlor wall.

Rix crouched on the floor behind the meager protection of a chair, the fireplace at his back. The Commando held five more bullets. Over the drumming of the rain, Rix heard Dunstan dragging himself across the floor. He tensed to run for the corridor, but the fallen wheelchair was in the way. If he tripped over it, Dunstan could put a shot right through his back. He looked wildly around for something with which to protect himself. The fireplace shovel leaned against the health. Rix glanced at the red embers, then took the shovel and scooped up ashes and fragments of smoking wood.

Rix waited, listening to the slow slide of Dunstan's body. He would get only one chance; if he didn't calculate it exactly, Dunstan would blow him away.

His pores leaked cold sweat; still he waited, trying to visualize how and where Dunstan would be lying. He heard the man shove aside a piece of furniture; a lamp clattered to the floor.

Wait, he told himself. Lightning flashed outside the windows, followed almost at once by a roll of thunder that shook the house.

The sound of Dunstan's dragging body stopped.

And Rix thought:
Now!

With a burst of adrenaline, he shoved the chair forward with his shoulder. Across the room, Dunstan fired; the bullet tore through the fabric inches from Rix's face, spraying him with smoking cotton. Before Dunstan could readjust his aim, Rix rose up and flung the embers.

The other man got off a third wild shot as the embers scattered across his face and the front of his shirt. The bullet whined past Rix's head, smashing one of the bay windows. Rain and wind swept into the room. Then Dunstan was writhing on the floor, the embers sizzling on his cheeks and scorching through his shirt.

Rix grasped his wrist and tried to shake the Commando loose. Dunstan's other hand came up, grabbing at Rix's sweater. Rix brought his fist down on the man's elbow—once, twice, and again, as hard as he could strike. Dunstan's fingers opened, and the Commando fell to the floor. Rix picked it up and scrambled away from the man.

"All right," he said huskily. "It's over."

Dunstan stared blankly up at him, red welts across his cheeks and forehead. Then his face collapsed and he began sobbing like a child. Rix couldn't bear to look at him; he emptied the three remaining cartridges from the Commando into his pocket, then put the gun out of Dunstan's reach, atop the mantel.

At the rear of the house, Rix found a telephone and dialed the operator, asking for the sheriffs office. The line crackled and hissed with static. When the telephone was answered, Rix said there had been an accident at the Dunstan house near Taylorville, and hung up as the woman asked his name.

There was nothing more he could do. He thought of calling Raven, but what could he say to her? Sorry, but her father was insane and had tried to kill him, and there had never been a book? His nerves were jangling as he returned to the parlor. Dunstan lay on his side, breathing shallowly, his stare fixed and vacant.

Rix stood over the man, as wind and rain slashed at him through the shattered window. Rage stirred within him, gathered and coiled. He had cooperated with Dunstan for nothing, had risked whatever inheritance he might receive for an Usher history that had never existed.

Dunstan gave a soft, tormented moan. One arm was flung out at his side, the fist tightly closed.

He made a fool of me, Rix seethed. Because of him, I risked everything!

The brown van. If Dunstan's house was being watched by someone that Walen sent, then . . .

Rix's hands clenched at his sides, his nails digging crescent moons into the skin of his palms. And from deep within him, from that dark stranger in himself that he did not know and had denied existed inside his skin, came the urge to kill.

He looked at the gun on the mantel. One shot would do it. The barrel pressed against Dunstan's skull, the man's blood and brains running with the raindrops on the wall. One shot.

—
do it now—

Rix looked into his hand. He'd brought the three bullets out of his pocket.

—
do it now—

Lightning streaked, hit the earth somewhere close. Thunder filled the house.

Rix held the Commando. He started to slide a bullet into the chamber.

—
do it now—

He clicked the cylinder shut. Sweat and rain streamed down his face. The gun felt good in his hand; it felt like power— absolute, unyielding power.

He turned toward Wheeler Dunstan, walked to him, and aimed the gun downward at his head. One shot. Do it now.

His hand was shaking. A cold rage had taken control of him, yet he seemed detached, as though watching himself from a distance. The dark stranger in his soul whispered urgently for him to squeeze the trigger. This was no longer Raven's father lying on the floor; this was Walen Usher's bitterest enemy, and because of him Rix had put all his faith in a nonexistent book.

He had risked everything to help Dunstan—and now he would be cut off from the Usher fortune without a dime. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Dunstan moaned, and his fist began to open.

In the palm was a silver button. It was one of the buttons from Rix's sweater, and he realized Dunstan had yanked it off when Rix fought for the gun.

A silver button, Rix thought. He tried to think past the whisper that urged him to kill Raven's father. A silver button. Where had he seen—

His head pounded fiercely, and the voice within him shrieked
DO IT NOW!

His finger convulsed on the trigger, and at the same time Rix heard his own desperate cry.

The Commando fired, gouging wood from the floor six inches from Dunstan's skull.

Rix turned and, with a shout of anger and revulsion, flung the gun through the broken window.

He picked up the silver button and ran from the house, through the sheets of rain to his car. At the end of the driveway, he saw that the brown van was gone. He sank his foot to the floor, causing the Thunderbird to fishtail dangerously. His hands gripped the wheel hard, and his shame at being so close to murder brought bitter tears to his eyes.

He had almost done something that—for the first time in his life—would have made his father very, very proud.

THE DRIVE TO AND FROM ASHEVILLE HAD BEEN A ROUTE THROUGH
hell. At the wheel of her Maserati, as the rain slashed in gray sheets across the road, Katt's concentration had narrowed down to a burning candle, a spoonful of bubbling heroin, and a hypodermic syringe.

The windshield wipers didn't help much. She trembled for need of the junk; her skin felt raw, peeled open. Her nerves sputtered in little panics. Even the palms of her hands in her lambskin driving gloves felt flame-blistered. A flash of lightning startled her, and for the first time in a long while she feared an attack.

Taped beneath her seat was a packet containing a quarter-ounce of heroin, purchased an hour before from an Asheville investment banker that Katt knew as "Mr. Candy Garden." Margaret had introduced them at a party several years before, and later had confided to Katt that she hoped her daughter found him attractive; after all, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in North Carolina.

She guided the Maserati through Usherland's gates and swept past the Gatehouse toward the garage. She pressed the button under the dashboard that raised the door to the Maserati's stall, then drove into the cool darkness.

The garage lights hadn't come on, Katt noted, and assumed that the storm might have blown a circuit or something. She'd have it looked at. She cut the purring engine, deposited her keys in her purse, and took the precious packet from its hiding place. The anticipation of quiet, restful dreams soothed her. In them she was always a little girl whose main preoccupation was tagging after her older brother, or riding horses along the gentle Usherland trails, or watching the clouds make pictures as they formed and broke over the mountains. Her dreams were always of summer, and in them she wore bright little-girl dresses. Sometimes her father visited her dreams, and he always smiled and said how pretty he thought she was.