All in One Piece (32 page)

She drinks. “I loved riding, but it was dangerous at the barn. Do you think I liked playing field hockey? I hated it. I played
those sports to get away from my brother. I took art lessons because it’s a girl thing, he wouldn’t come near. I faked the
flu so I wouldn’t have to see him.”

“Dani, did you talk with your parents?”

“They wouldn’t listen. They loved their myth, how great Steven was for their dear firstborn son. The divorce didn’t change
a thing. Besides, Margaret’s weird. She has something going with Steven’s ex, in case you didn’t know.”

“With Alex?”

“You should see her look at that guy, like there’s nobody else in the universe. But my brother could care less. He games them
all. He steals my mom’s silver, my dad’s guns. I think he steals from Margaret too.”

“Guns? What kind of guns?”

“Western six-shooters. My father comes from Nevada. Anything that’s western, he’s a fanatic. They blame the house cleaners,
but it’s Drew. My brother just hid himself better with Steve around. He’s poison. He’d have been a Nazi. Drew’d do anything.”

“Dani, when you said Steven and Drew were more than brothers, what did you mean?”

Her sudden laugh is shrill.

“Why is that funny?” I ask.

“Just listen to you… because it just goes on and on… Drew, number one, the big topic. Here we sit in my house—the
boathouse is my house—and it’s all about my brother.”

“And about Steven. You sang at his memorial service a couple of hours ago. It’s appropriate. It’s right.”

She pauses. “Steve talked to me about your aunt.” Her voice drops to a hush. “About how she was psychic.”

“Yes.”

“So that means she could, like, read minds?”

“No, not necessarily. The word has many meanings.” I wish I could see the expression on Dani’s face. If only the moon would
give us some light. “But my Aunt Jo was psychic, it’s true.”

“That must be fabulous.”

“It’s a gift.”

“And you have it too? You go into a trance?”

“It’s more intuitional… like daydreams. For me, the experience is… intense.” Do I tell her my temple throbs at this
very moment? That I see Steven colliding with a log and drowning? That my temple is pulsing? No. “Images,” I say. “Just different
images, like a picture.”

“Cool.” She slaps the bottle against her palm. Dani has not answered my question about Steven and Drew.

“Dani, let’s go now. It’s stuffy in here. I’m getting cold. We’ll take my car. If you’re worried, I can call a friend of mine.
He’s very physical. I’ll call him.”

“Just let me put the bench back first.” We stand, and I admire the easy swing of her muscular arms as I reach down for my
bag. “Dani, I can’t seem to find my bag.” The little flashlight beam has died. “Can you help find my bag? It’s right here—”

In the silence, there’s a sudden whoosh of air. It’s a glass bottle. It grazes my scalp, catches my shoulder, and thunks to
the floor and rolls. It was thrown.

“Dani… ,” I whisper, gasping. “Your brother…” Drew is here. He must be inside. “Dani? Dani, can you hear me?” No
answer. “Dani?”

Something crunches. I know that sound. It’s an oar pulled from a wall notch.

“Dani?”

There’s silence. Then the oar… from the dark I sense it coming, piercing the gloom. It comes at me blade-first—a spear.

My God, it isn’t Drew. It’s Dani.

I
dive, and splinters rake my palms and wrists and shins. I’m underneath a rack of boats and panting. My shoes are gone, nylons
shredded. My jacket buttons strike the floor like marbles. The oar pokes like a broom. Is the blade to stab me? No, it’s the
handle grip. She wants to poke me out.

She tried to smash my head with a bottle? To beat me with an oar?

Why? Is she crazy? My heart pounds its message: get out of here.

The river-side doors are my best chance. Yet my car key’s in my bag, which Dani surely grabbed when she moved the bench. Stupid
me. This was planned.

All of it? From the church? From before?

Why?

My palms and legs are on fire on the splintery floor. But the prodding oar has stopped. I’m flattened beneath the bottom row
of the longest shells. I do not see her feet. If I lie here, the night will move. Eventually dawn.

No, this is a lull, not a truce. I have to do… something.

Get to the river doors. Get outside, across the rocks and around to Storrow and flag down a car? No. She’ll knock me down
as I stumble on the stones. I’ll have to swim for it. The Charles in New England in November? How many minutes to freezing?

First the doors—

But that’s her plan, isn’t it?… to wait until I dash. To let me roll the ramp door open—then strike.

Unless I beat her to it, make it outside first. My skirt zipper… unzip my skirt, slip out of it. It feels like an eternity.
Splinters drive through the panty hose as I belly-crawl out of the skirt and inch forward on this floor. From here to the
sliding doors, it’s eight, ten feet of open flooring. The crane looms like a raptor.

But what if she has a gun? My mind goes white with fear. Think, Reggie. Think.

I’ll take off my jacket, toss it out, and see if she shoots. My fingers fumble on the buttons, and the sleeves cling like
skin—like a straitjacket. With clammy hands, at last I wad it up, cock my left arm sideways, then fling the bundle of wool
with buttons and brooch that strike the floor.

Clackety-clack
… the buttons and brooch on the flooring.

And a hard
pam, pam
from above. It’s not a gun. There’s no smell of burned powder. I have no idea what the sound is. Perhaps a starting pistol
for a boat race?

Pam.

With knees bent in a crouch, I get ready. It’s one, two—and three.

I dash straight ahead, stepping high for footing on the bumpy floor. Then
pam
. By my leg.
Pam
—like a needle near my head.
Pam, pam.

My arm. It hit my arm. The flesh of my upper arm is a burning-hot rod. I’m sick at my stomach, I feel it pierce… in and
out like an arrow.

Like a nail. It’s a nail. Dani is firing nails.

A nail gun.

I’m at the doors, grabbing an edge, pushing, shoving the door with all my might. It won’t budge. Blood runs down my arm, my
elbow. And now clouds are closing in, my mind a patchwork of clouds.

Reggie, focus every thought on this door. Fight the door, fight the clouds. Feel the wood, read it. The nail gun is quiet.
Is Dani on the move? She’s not behind me, but I feel her. And the door… the sliding doors won’t give at all.

Because they’re locked.

No, they’re barred. I feel brackets and a plank. If I can lift the plank from the brackets, I can get out.

Another sound starts now, a grinding, a motor. I clutch the plank and push up, but it falls back down into the bracket.

Grind, grind . . .

Then I see it coming. It’s the crane. It cradles something long and narrow in the slings. It’s poised above me. It swings
overhead where I claw at this plank. It swings over my head.

And the shape in the slings—a wood shell. It’s coming down at my head from the highest rafters, from where I first saw it
in the daylight days ago. It’s wood and long and rounded on the bottom—and now I understand.

Like a log.

My head pulses like a drum.

It’s the log, the log that hit Steven. It’s coming at me. It’s ten feet above, then five, then—

With one big heave, I thrust the plank up.
Up.
It falls away, and the door slides just as the log grazes my head and I stumble down the ramp and, once in the water, begin
stroking to swim in the icy Charles River.

The current takes me, though I’m numb, my bleeding arm useless, teeth chattering. I kick, swallowing mouthfuls of rank river.
My knees and arms bang on rocks downstream as I fight to get ashore. My toes sink into icy muck, but I claw my way up to the
guardrail.

Cars are streaming by in the darkness, their headlights blinding. Horns blare, but nobody stops. If Dani comes after me—or
Drew? If they’re in this together—

A Jeep slows and races on. They all race on. My poor bleeding arm. My scalp is freezing. Where are the cops? One car veers
to the guardrail, to the shoulder beside me. One headlight is out.

No, it’s not not a car, but a motorcycle. The rider in a helmet.

Visor up, he’s dismounting, pulling off his leather jacket at the rail. “Put this on.” It’s half bark, half growl. Lifting,
he’s lifting my body over the guardrail. He’s tying a kerchief around my arm.

I cannot speak.

“Here—put the helmet on.” As if I’m a child, the leather jacket comes to my knees. I smell Camels. Atlantic eyes, the ginger
hair. “I said, let’s put the helmet on.”

“Stark.”

He lifts me up. “Hang on tight, Cutter.”

“Don’t know if I can.”

“Damn right you can. Hell of a spot to hitchhike, Cutter. Hell of a night to go for a swim.”

I
refuse to present myself as the walking wounded here at the precinct house. I’m a deputy volunteer, not a casualty. In a
necktie patterned with frogs, Frank Devaney gives me his signature look—patient, bemused, exasperated. Maglia is the grill
master. “So you went to the boathouse solely to gather information? You did not expect to confront Danielle Vogler?”

How many times do I have to answer this? “Detective Maglia, I enjoy life. I would not knowingly volunteer to be murdered.”

“You had no reason at the time to think Danielle was involved in Damelin’s death?”

“Of course not.” But suddenly I get it. They want to know, how did I manage to get one jump ahead of them? It’s as if we competed
to solve the murder, and I won. Frankly, though, didn’t I win? Nearly killed, but first to the finish line. Sort of.

“And when she attacked you with the bottle and nail gun—”

“And a wood shell lowered deliberately to strike my head.”

“And you say you were picked up by a friend who just happened to come along on a motorcycle?” Incredulity drips in Maglia’s
every syllable.

“Someone who’s helped me with my dog and… other tasks. He attended the memorial service and grew concerned about my whereabouts.”
Stark
is on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say his name at this moment. “Could I ask you something?” Maglia says a curt yes.
“Could I ask how you think Dani killed Steven?” That, you see, is the police theme so far today: Dani the killer.

They exchange glances. Finally Devaney speaks. “It looks as though the perpetrator did this crime in two stages, starting
at the Renfrew boathouse. As we see it, Steven Damelin came to the boathouse, just as you did, to meet Danielle Vogler on
the night of his death. In the course of things, she deliberaterly swung a cradled boat at his head, which knocked him semiconscious.
Then she pushed him into the water.”

“But how could she possibly get Steven’s body back to his apartment? There was no blood on the stairs. Besides, he was nailed
to his apartment floor.
Nailed
like the upholstery of a sofa.” As my arm was nailed. The
pam, pam
of the gun is mentally indelible. Under the bandage, my arm still hurts, though the doctor and X-ray technician congratulated
me on a flesh wound that missed vital nerves, bone, and blood vessels. “So he drowned, and you think—”

“No, he didn’t drown. Just as you didn’t.”

“But if he was unconscious—”

“He came to. He was drifting with the current, just as you did, and he managed to get to shore. He was weakened and cold.”

“But how did he get to Barlow Square. In a taxi?”

Maglia looks sly. “We located a driver who picked up a man along Storrow that Tuesday night. The driver thought he was drunk
because the man was soaking wet and incoherent. He got the address from his wallet and took him home.”

“To 27 Barlow Square? How did you find the taxi driver?”

“We’re detectives, Ms. Cutter. We investigate. That’s what people like yourself pay us to do.” The moment sours.

“That still doesn’t explain how he got… nailed.” I wince at the word.

Maglia says, “We theorize that Dani Vogler saw Steven come out of the river and decided to follow him to his apartment to
finish what she started.”

“And he let her in? After she nearly killed him?”

“She appealed to their closeness over many years. She begged to come in and apologize and explain and help him. He was very
weak. She brought the drill and went to work.”

“And he couldn’t fend her off because he didn’t have the strength?”

They both nod. Devaney says, “She saw leather strips and tied them on his wrists to implicate his ex-lover. But the drill
wasn’t her weapon of choice, Reggie.” He pauses. “It was the nail gun.”

“The Crowninshed nail gun.”

“As I believe you know.”

I nod. My arm aches up and down. “Then what about the Chinese calligraphy on my door. It means death trap, you know.”

“It means pineapple.” Maglia and I glare at one another.

Devaney says, “It was probably a deliberate diversion. We understand that Ms. Vogler is something of an artist.”

“She took art classes. And she lettered the family holiday cards.” The “girl” art supposedly sheltered her from her brother,
though I didn’t think to connect Dani’s calligraphy to my door. “It wouldn’t be hard to work up Chinese characters, would
it? And how about that
Survival Handbook
with the threatening note? Did she shove it into my mail slot?”

“We think so. At this time, we believe she acted alone. We also think she tried to run you down the day you moved in.”

Dani in the blue car. “But why? Why kill Steven—or me? I can’t believe her brother had nothing to do with this. Andrew Vogler
is corrupt. He lies. He might be involved.”

“We won’t rule him out yet. But, Reggie, motives can twist down deep. You say this woman was passionate about rowing. She
had another passion.”

They wait for me to add it up. “Not Steven?”

“Steven.”

“His Helping Hand scheme—was she involved?”