Ashes (15 page)

Sprawled on his back, the knife in hand, ready to throw. A deceptive vacancy in his eyes, the image of a man in shock. The crunch of boots on snow and winter-dead foliage, and Beatty standing by the log.

Even with so much at stake, Sean could not help noticing that Beatty had put on a lot of weight.

Beatty stood, the rifle raised at the ready. Then, abruptly, lowered it. Beatty sighed. “I’m sorry, Irish.”

Before Beatty could raise the rifle again, Sean threw the knife. His aim was off; the knife struck Beatty in the shoulder. Beatty staggered back, the rifle’s shot going wild into the trees, and Sean was up and the two of them grappled for the rifle. They fell, tumbling down the slope, each trying to prise the rifle from the other’s grip, rolled down the slope and landed with a heavy thump on the ice. The struggle for the rifle renewed, push and pull on the slippery ice, edging away from shore, further out onto the lake. No words from either of them, only harsh breathing.

Then Beatty threw all his weight into a shove. Sean lost his grip on the rifle and tumbled to the ice, tried to get up, slipped, got to his hands and knees. He looked up and saw Beatty on his feet, the rifle aimed and ready for a head shot this time. Sean saw the rifle’s muzzle like the opening of a dark tunnel into eternity, saw Beatty’s eyes above the rifle, blue ice eyes with something like regret in them.

He raised one hand, in appeal to that regret. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to,” Beatty replied.

He had time to think,
Jennifer, I failed you, I’m sorry,
and then Beatty pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. The rifle was jammed.

For a moment they were both frozen, astonished, and as Beatty moved to drop the rifle and reach for his sidearm Sean slid across the ice, hitting Beatty in the shins with his body and knocking Beatty’s feet out from under him. Beatty landed hard on the ice, his breath wheezing out of him, a .38 in his right hand, arm outstretched. Sean grabbed the jammed rifle by the barrel, raised it high over head and brought the stock down on Beatty’s right arm, hearing bone crack as Beatty howled and let go of the .38. Beatty lashed out at him with legs and his left arm, and in the struggle the .38 was knocked skittering over the ice out of their reach.

Now Beatty on his back, Sean straddling Beatty, aiming the rifle’s stock at Beatty’s head. Brought it down, Beatty jerked to the left, and he missed. Again, and Beatty jerked to the right. Through it all, Sean could hear a sound. A soft, creaking groan. Something distantly familiar, an old fear resurrected.

It was a sound from his boyhood Indiana winters. The sound of ice weakening.

Beatty threw him off, and in a few seconds they were both on their feet, circling each other warily. Sean held the jammed rifle, his eyes on Beatty, his ears straining for the sound of the weakening ice. Did Beatty know that sound? Probably not, Beatty was from Arizona. They circled, each waiting for the other to make a move. He had to end it soon. That creaking groan was getting louder, and sooner or later Richard Blaine and his cronies would come out of the meeting and see the two of them tangoing out on the ice.

Finish it. One way or another.

Sean eased his feet along the ice, searching for something to brace himself against. He found it, a protruding piece of driftwood. It was all he needed.

He began trying to clear the rifle, his face lowered to the weapon but eyes covertly watching Beatty. He saw Beatty take his chance, come toward Sean with all the speed he could muster.

Perfect.

When Beatty got close Sean dropped the rifle, caught hold of Beatty’s wrists, twisted so his hip caught the force of Beatty’s charge. It was a throw-hold, an old judo technique he’d learned years ago, and it worked as well as it ever had. Beatty was thrown over his hip and went flying, landing with all the force of his weight and the momentum of his charge, flat on his back. The ice broke beneath Beatty and he plunged into the black water.

Sean threw himself backward and away from the hole, trying to distribute his weight as evenly as he could. He watched, waiting with held breath for Beatty to surface, but there was only white ice and black water.

He let out a deep sigh, a plume of steam from his breath rising into the air. It was over, he had only to get off the ice and gather the weapons. Everything was going to be —

Thud.

From the ice underneath him. Two more
thuds
in quick succession. Like someone pounding on a wooden door.

Don’t look. Don’t.
But of course he did, and saw Beatty, his image opaqued by the ice but clear enough for Sean to see not just Beatty’s face but the terror in his eyes.

No, he didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to watch Beatty drown. But when Sean tried to look away, he could not. He could not even close his eyes. He could only watch while Beatty hammered uselessly at the ice, listen to the thumps of his fists. It went on for much longer than Sean would have thought possible, thrashing and hammering and eyes wide in a mute plea for mercy. Beatty’s struggles became frenzied, convulsive; he screamed. His cry, though muffled by ice and distorted by water, was not just a scream but a name. Sean’s name.

Beatty gasped like a landed fish, choking, breathing in the wrong element. His struggles slowed and then all but ceased; his terrified expression gave way to a vague look of dread and resignation. Three more blows against the ice, the last one scarcely more than a tap, and then Beatty was sinking down to the bottom of the lake, where he would not be found until spring. The only mercy of it was that the ice obscured the look in Beatty’s dying eyes as he sank. Sean’s last glimpse of Beatty was of his hands in their tan leather gloves, stretched out toward the surface.

Beatty vanished from his sight, and Sean could move again. He half crawled, half staggered to the shore, up the slope. There was a tall pine there and he sank to the earth by it, propping himself against its trunk, panting, keeping his back to the lake. He was slimed with sweat, felt it soaking into his clothes, yet inside he felt cold. He was afraid, but it was not a kind of fear he had felt before. It went deeper, to the core of his soul, and he remembered Robert telling him that something did not feel right about this mission. Was this it?

It was not just that he had killed Beatty. He had killed before, many times. But he had always prided himself on making his kills quickly and without unnecessary suffering. He saw it as business, the way a veterinarian puts down a rabid dog. A gunshot to the head, the snap of a broken neck, the stiletto in the heart. Even with Henry Connolly, once he had gotten the information he wanted he’d ended it quickly. Professionally. Mercifully. Those people hadn’t died in slow suffocating pain. They hadn’t screamed Sean’s name with their dying breath.

Beatty had been his compatriot. Had been a friend, or as close as any of them got to having friends in their profession. Had saved his life once, and now he had repaid the favor by consigning Beatty to a death worse than any he had dealt before. Sean shut his eyes, still breathing harshly, afraid for the first time of something other than failure or death. He’d thought those were the only things to be afraid of, and was now terribly certain that he’d been wrong. Robert knew, had tried to warn him, but Sean hadn’t listened.

He pushed the thoughts away, forced his breathing to slow. It was done, and that was all. There was no taking it back. It was over and he’d had to do it. Beatty had been sent to kill him, after all.

He had to get out of here. He was in no shape to continue the stakeout, and he had to get rid of the weapons and anything else he and Beatty had left. Getting to his feet, he had to rest leaning against the tree until his knees stopped shaking. When he felt steady he walked to the fallen log, picked up his gun and holstered it. He found the knife, sheathed it. At the lake’s edge he found Beatty’s .38, slipped it into his pocket.

The rifle was still out on the ice.

Sean hesitated. Then eased his way out onto the ice, trying not to look down for fear that he would see Beatty again, blue with cold and drowning, wearing the grin of the vengeful dead. But of course there was nothing. He picked up the rifle, and for a moment was tempted to throw it into the hole in the ice, whether as a gesture of respect or superstition he did not know. In the end practicality won out, and he kept it.

Once on land again, he breathed a deep sigh of relief, and began the walk back to his van. For a moment he stopped, was tempted to look back, but did not want to see what was behind him. As he walked, it began to snow. Before too much time had passed his footprints were filled, and only the hole in the ice showed that anything had happened here today.

“S
o,” said Jennifer, “I guess I can chalk that one up to experience.”

Jennifer and Suzanne sat at Suzanne’s kitchen table. Mugs of tea, Jennifer’s mostly untouched, were in front of them, along with a plate of vanilla wafers. From the living room came the sounds of play, the Joplin twins busy with a Mousetrap game. Jennifer had gone for a walk along the shops on Commercial Row yesterday, after picking her stuff up from work, and had bought the game.

She hadn’t gone into lurid details of the New Year’s Eve fiasco, nor had she told Suzanne how when she’d gone in to retrieve her potted cyclamen, her desk calendar, and the framed picture of herself and Cindy on Splash Mountain, the office girls had all ignored her and Alex hadn’t appeared at all. Not that she wanted to see him. But Suzanne only said. “You’ll find something else sooner or later. I mean, you’re OK for a while, money-wise?”

“Sure.” She was OK for more than a while, but Suzanne didn’t need to know that.

“Then it’s all for the best. To be honest, I didn’t think that was a great place for you. It’s no secret that Alex Salto sometimes expects a lot from his employees.” She put the slightest bit of emphasis on the word
lot,
gave Jennifer a level look. “Especially if they’re young and pretty.”

Jennifer felt a wave of crimson wash over her face and recede quickly. It was not so much embarrassment, oddly, but guilt for underestimating Suzanne, writing her off as a lightweight. One more thing to make amends for.

Before she could apologize, Suzanne clapped her hands together dismissively. “Look at it this way, the year can only get better.”

“I heard that,” Jennifer said, smiling in spite of everything. “Spilled milk under the bridge, as my kid sister says. And on a totally different subject, do you know how to get to the big linen store in Vancouver?”

“Of course. You need towels?”

“I need more than that.” It was true. The white box of her bedroom was working on her nerves. White walls, milk-glass globe light overhead, her bed with its tarnished brass headboard, the duvet she’d had since college, once a pretty peach but now faded to beige. It was like sleeping in a refrigerator — worse because at least a refrigerator has something on its shelves. “Are you free tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Care to do a little shopping with me?”

* * *

T
he next evening Suzanne lay on Jennifer’s living room sofa. The weather was damp and Suzanne’s red-brown hair was frizzy, fanned out around her head. “Call Bill, tell him I can’t summon the energy to walk home.”

Jennifer, sprawled on the floor, replied, “I can’t, I’m too tired to get to the phone.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I
am
tired.”

“No, about the shopping. You said ‘a little shopping.’ Little. I can prove it. The house is bugged, I’ve got it on tape.”

Shopping bags lay strewn across the floor, their contents spilling out. Sheets and throw pillows. Towels for kitchen and bath. A down comforter. Blankets. Drapes. Rolls of wallpaper. Little odds and ends, candles and knickknacks. It had taken them half an hour to cram all this into Jennifer’s car, and that was after they’d realized they couldn’t take the drapery rods, not unless they wanted to drive back to Haven Cove with the rods sticking out the windows like jousting poles. The rods, along with the headboard, the clothes hamper, the silk ficus tree, and the vanity set, would be delivered.

“I think you’ve got some repressed nesting instincts,” said Suzanne, propping herself up on one elbow to survey the purchases. “And I think you’re that store’s favorite customer.”

“I regret nothing.” Jennifer didn’t, though it wasn’t something she’d planned.

She and Suzanne had left early, about 8:30, armed with coffee and blueberry muffins. The day was gray and drizzly but still lovely as they drove down the coast, the ocean slate-blue trimmed with white wave foam, the mountains snow-dusted. They arrived at the store still wired from caffeine and Jennifer enthused by the drive. The store was one of those big home linen shops, more or less everything you’d need for every room in the house, and if you couldn’t find it, chances were they could order it for you.

Jennifer didn’t quite know what took hold of her. Really, all she had gone there for was some sheets and drapes. She had intended to stick to what she knew. The safe things. Pastels that would be mix-and-matchable. What her mother would approve of.

Perhaps she could blame Suzanne, for she’d been standing here, holding a pillow — red velvet with heavy gold fringe. “This sort of stuff always cracks me up,” Suzanne said. “I call this style ‘San Francisco cathouse’. Not that I’ve been to a San Francisco cathouse, but you get the drift.”

Jennifer took the pillow from Suzanne, held it for a moment. Lurking deep in her was a secret yearning for over-the-top home decoration. She thought of that Edgar Allan Poe story, “Masque of the Red Death,” Prince Prospero’s castle with each room in a different color including all the decorations and windows. Like her house, now that she thought of it, with the rose marble living room, country kitchen, aquarium-hued bathroom. Each room with its own personality, except for her bedroom.

Abruptly she put the pillow into the cart, snatched up the pastel blue sheets and put them back on the shelves. “Where’d you find the pillow?” she asked Suzanne.