13 1/2 (35 page)
Authors: Nevada Barr
“Danny, darlin’, I know you and Marshall have some talking to do,” her voice was petal soft and so beseeching Marshall hurt hearing it. “But would you be so kind as to help me get the girls tucked in? What with one thing and another, we would feel more secure if you didn’t leave us alone right now.” The last words were said in a voice that turned Marshall to water, a voice he doubted many men could stand against.
Danny could, but he didn’t. It was the opportunity he’d been waiting for.
“Sure thing. I’d rather you weren’t alone. It’s just not safe.” He winked at Marshall and backed toward the door, Gracie moving awkwardly with him. Before he turned and followed Polly out through the kitchen, he smiled at Marshall and stroked Gracie’s hair. “You wait here,” he said.
Marshall knew precisely what he meant.
Then they were gone; he heard the door to the backstairs close behind them.
He could call 911, but if the police came, sirens blazing, Danny would surely kill Polly and the girls. If he followed his brother, he would snap Gracie’s neck without a second thought. If he did nothing . . .
If he did nothing, it would happen all over again.
Twitches wracked his body, a seizure of conflicting orders. Shaking, he took one step, then another. From overhead, he heard a faint thump—his kitchen door shutting. Footsteps whispered on the backstairs.
Was Danny coming back, Gracie’s slender neck in the vise of arm and hand, listening to see if he followed?
Marshall moved again, softly this time, careful to make no sound on the hardwood floor. In the kitchen, he stopped and listened. Silence was not reassuring. The uneasy twitching of his hands worsened. Marshall was more frightened than he’d been since his parents were killed. He’d grown unaccustomed to physical fear. One of the perks of being a stone-cold killer was that one didn’t worry much about other predators. He wasn’t afraid for himself, but fear for his family was a solid thing, an entity, pumping so much adrenaline into his body he couldn’t stay still.
A crash sounded overhead, and he was out the kitchen door and halfway up the stairs. A noise from below, from the cellar, turned him around. Black and panting, a troll’s shape rushed upward.
“Danny,” he said, and his brother stopped. The stairwell was dark but for the light from the street coming through the garden window. It was enough to see; Danny had the axe in his hands. Faint light glistened on the planes of his cheeks and across his flat brow. It flashed dully on his teeth as he smiled. Not his matinee idol smile. This smile was detached from his humanity, a cold mockery of amusement, of the weaknesses and failings of others.
“Put it down,” Marshall said. His voice shook as badly as his hands.
“It’s necessary, brother. You made it necessary. I’m just here to clean up after you. Like always. It’s me and you, the Marchand brothers. I told you not to fuck that up. Now you’ve done it. You’ve killed them again.”
The Marchand brothers, identical twins, dead at birth
. Marshall took a step down toward Danny.
. Marshall took a step down toward Danny.
“No sense in it, brother,” Danny warned him. “It’s over. It’s done. They’re already dead. Easy pickings, so soft and sweet. I just got the axe for the finishing touches, history repeating itself. Juries love that. But I won’t call the cops, not if you don’t force me to.”
All Marshall heard was, “They’re dead.” With the howl of an injured animal, he hurled himself at his brother. The blade of the axe cut into his cheek. He felt the force but not the pain. Before Danny could strike again, Marshall had the handle, his hands between his brother’s on the shaft. The stairwell was narrow and twisted; Marshall’s shoulders smashed into the walls as they struggled. Danny’s face, still lit from the window, was as smooth and calm as if they played at cat’s cradle.
Blood poured from Marshall’s cheek, onto the back of his hand, leaking onto the axe handle, making the wood slick. His brain burned. His body was a machine gone amok. Another cry burst from him, and he heaved upward with all his strength. Surprise registered on Danny’s face as his hands slipped from the newly slickened handle, and he began to fall backwards. Shadows took him, as he slammed onto the lower landing where the steps turned again into the cellar.
Sudden and complete silence filled the space. Then came a whisper, no more than a breath of sound.
“Dylan?”
Axe still in hand, Marshall slowly descended the stairs.
“Rich?” Time folded in on itself. Mack the Giant was but a few minutes away. Rich was crumpled at the bottom of the flight of stairs, his head propped up against the wall at the corner. Light from the window didn’t penetrate far enough that Marshall could read his face.
“Help me, Dyl.”
Marshall crouched down beside his brother, the space so tight his butt hit one wall and the head of the axe the opposite. “Are you hurt?” It wasn’t Marshall asking, it was Dylan. Marshall heard the concern in his voice and hated it.
Dylan loved his brother.
“I broke something. You made me a fucking cripple.” Danny started to laugh and the sound seared the last of Dylan from Marshall’s soul.
Marshall rose and ran up the stairs toward his apartment, the staccato laughs following him in a poisonous swarm.
39
Marshall took the stairs three at a time and slammed into the door to his and Polly’s kitchen. Danny had locked it. Marshall swung the axe and heard the frame splinter. A kick, and he was in. Lights were on in the kitchen and dining rooms. Both were empty. He ran for the stairs and, for once, climbed them without feeling the clamp of Mack’s hand on the back of his neck, his rasping insults at every step.
The upstairs hall was empty. His office door stood ajar. The master bedroom door was shut. Adrenaline drained out of him as fast as it had shot through his veins.
Like then, like Dylan, he did not want to see what lay in the bedroom. Visions of black-and-white photographs of his dad in the double bed, his face cloven in two, crowded Marshall’s vision, shifted, became Polly’s face. Lena appeared, her tiny body destroyed. Lena drifted, became Emma.
Sirens.
The police had arrived. Marshall was holding a bloody axe, the only one standing after the bloodbath. Danny—Rich—lay wounded at the foot of the stairs.
Like before. Just like before.
He was still standing there when two young policemen came upstairs, guns drawn.
“Put down the axe! Put down the axe! Put down the axe!” they shouted at him. Marshall turned toward them.
“Put it down,” one of them screamed and pulled the trigger.
The sharp report of gunfire released Marshall’s fingers. As the bullet smashed into the wall six feet from his head, the axe fell from his hands.
“It’s down! It’s down! He’s dropped it, for Christ’s sake!” one cop shouted at the other. Both were kids, both looked scared.
“It’s okay,” Marshall heard himself say. “You’ll need to look in the bedroom. You can handcuff me if it will make you feel better.”
His compliance reassured them, allowed them to move from scared to angry.
“You’re damn right we’ll cuff you. You’re goddamn right,” the shooter growled as he walked crabwise up, his pistol still held on Marshall.
“Could you radio for an ambulance? My brother’s hurt, he’s on the backstairs. I think I broke his back.”
“Proud motherfucker, aren’t you?”
Son of Mack the Giant.
Cuffed and pushed face down on the hall floor, Marshall turned his head to watch them open the bedroom door. It was good to be manacled. Prison would be good, too. No, not good, Marshall thought. Not good or bad. Nothing, really. Just one long unbroken nothing. Without Polly, life was his prison.
He wished they had put him where he wouldn’t be able to see in. Because he could, he had to.
“God damn,” the cop huffed as the door refused to budge. Son of Mack pulled out his sidearm again, readying to shoot the lock like they did in police shows.
“Oh, stop, would you stop with the gun?” the other policeman said. “It’s not locked. Something’s wedged against it.”
Both of them put their shoulders into it, and the door opened a foot or so. Another shove and whatever was blocking the way toppled with a crash that reverberated through the floorboards and quivered in Marshall’s bones. The door swung wide. The policemen stood to the sides, guns drawn, backs to the wall. Marshall could see in.
Polly was there. And Emma and Gracie. The girls were on the king-sized bed and looked no bigger than fairies. Polly, her face white as wax and hard as granite, was at the foot, standing, facing the door. She had a cell phone in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
Ready to die for her children.
But she hadn’t, and Marshall began to cry with relief. In the past weeks, he’d cried more than he had since he’d been little. These tears came easily from joy; they neither blinded him nor choked but flowed warm and comforting.
Polly and the girls were alive. The nothing he’d looked toward would always be peopled. Wherever he served his time, even if he got the death penalty, in his mind he would see them. He would never be alone. Marshall closed his eyes so he would not have to see his wife’s hatred, the fear in his children’s faces. That way he could remember only that which would allow him to live.
“Put it down. Drop the knife,” he heard a cop yell, and there was a clatter.
Marshall’s brain shut down, and he welcomed unconsciousness.
40
It was spring, and it was raining. Marshall felt the first warm drop hit his face. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t want to know. Here in this place where it rained so gently was where he wanted to stay. Another reality, the one outside this cocoon, pushed at the back of his wakening mind, but he ignored it.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and knew he was about to be dragged back. “No,” he murmured. “Let me go.”
“Shh. Shh. It’s going to be okay now.” Polly’s voice gave Marshall the courage to open his eyes. She sat beside him, brushing the hair from his forehead. “You’re in the hospital,” she said. “We are all okay, and so are you.” He tried to lift his hand to touch her face but hadn’t the strength. He closed his eyes because he could no longer keep them open.
“You believed me,” Marshall said softly. After a lifetime of living Richard’s lies, he didn’t know what he believed. “Talk to me,” he whispered. “So I’ll know you are really here.”
Polly’s genteel drawl drifted through whatever drugs they’d given him. “No darlin’, I didn’t believe you. I am truly sorry, but I did not know what to believe. Emma saved us. She saw the lipstick.”
“Lipstick,” he repeated. The word made no sense, but the sound of his wife’s voice was a balm, and he wanted to hear it forever. “Tell me.” His voice was mostly air, but she heard him, and he knew she was leaning close. The smell of her hair touched him even through the stink of hospital sterility.
“Yes, lipstick. The story is too long to tell without a glass of wine and a comfortable chair. Suffice to say, I was attacked—not hurt, my love—but I didn’t know my assailant. It was at Vondra’s apartment, and there was a great deal of red lipstick lying about. Emma saw a streak of red down the back of Danny’s shirt, then I knew it was him at Vondra’s.
“Emma saw it when the five of us were in Danny’s bedroom. We were all caught in that terrible tableau.” Polly laughed. “I felt like I was on stage in the last act of
Hamlet.
Once I realized Danny was dangerous, I thought if I could get him to move, to let Gracie come upstairs . . . I thought if he didn’t think I knew . . . I don’t know exactly what I thought.” She finished by kissing him, lightly and sweetly.
Hamlet.
Once I realized Danny was dangerous, I thought if I could get him to move, to let Gracie come upstairs . . . I thought if he didn’t think I knew . . . I don’t know exactly what I thought.” She finished by kissing him, lightly and sweetly.
“You are a wonder. A night like you must have had, and you still made Danny believe you.” Marshall opened his eyes again. The sight of his wife melted away the haze of drugs and horror.
“Darlin’, the day I cannot fool one more man one more time, you may put me out on an ice floe for the polar bears.”
She moved away. Marshall felt the cold come between them.
“I came across a carton of papers in the basement. They were notes and articles justifying the most awful killings.”
“You found them,” Marshall said hollowly.
“With a little help from your brother. They were in your handwriting.”
“Homework,” Marshall said, and years of poring over the butchery of the human race, of writing justifications for unjustifiable actions, threatened his fragile hope.
Polly waited.
“At least at first it was homework; then, I guess it became habit. When I was at Drummond . . . ”
Polly looked confused and Marshall realized with a pang how much of his life he’d kept secret from her, how much of himself he had kept secret from everyone. The need to tell her everything, every small challenge and terror and delight, share with her the boy who’d been so scared, the boy who’d seen the butterflies and held tightly to his mother’s kiss, the teenager who had so little hope he’d let the other boys ink 13½ on his forearm so he couldn’t ever forget he had but half a chance in life—less, no chance at all—hit him so hard he laughed. Without warning, the laughter turned to tears. When she knew, she might no longer love him.
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