Blood Ties (41 page)

He checked his watch. He had about three minutes left.

It was a trick of the imagination, he knew, but suddenly Sam's one-story bungalow became the last home Tregear had shared with his father. He was twelve years old again, and Dad was asleep in a second-floor bedroom. He had just discovered the corpse in the van, but running away was no longer an option. He had to go into that house and face his worst nightmare, the man who had raised him, whom he had loved all his life.

“Tregear.”

He turned his head and saw Sergeant Brinkley, who had something in his hand. It was a gun, a standard service revolver.

“Take it,” Brinkley murmured, as if the offer had to remain their secret. “Give yourself a chance.”

Tregear put his hand on the gun and, very gently, pushed it away.

“I can't,” he said, in a voice so quiet he might have been talking to himself. “He's my father. I'd never be able to bring myself to use it.”

“Okay.” Brinkley reached back and put the revolver in its holster. “But the first shot fired, we're coming in.”

Tregear flashed him a quick, frightened grin. “I'm counting on that.”

He stepped down from the curb and started his slow walk across Belhaven Avenue. Each step seemed to require a separate act of will.

Tregear looked up into the night sky, nearly obliterated by the floodlights, searching for a star. It seemed the most important object of his life to see one point of light in the heavens, but there was none.

He had lied to the police—he had no real doubt Walter intended to kill him. But his first object was to get Ellie out of there, and that seemed possible. That was worth dying for.

Then he would just see, along the road to Come What May.

The gentle slope of Sam's front lawn was like a mountain under his feet. He wanted to get down on his hands and knees to climb it.

Finally he touched the corner of the house and somehow he felt better. Now he had something to do.

His cell phone rang.

“Where the hell are you?” It was his father's voice.

“I'm on the walkway, coming around to the back of the house.”

“Well, move it.”

“In my own sweet time, Dad.”

He clicked the phone off.

In was three steps up from the flagstones to the porch, and before he took the first step Tregear could see Sam lying there, his feet toward him.

Tregear let the porch door slam shut behind him. Best to let Dad know he had arrived.

He knelt down and checked the pulse in Sam's throat. Sam never stirred. Then Tregear clicked a button on his cell phone.

“Sam's unconscious, but his heart is beating,” he said. “Get your people in here.”

He stood up and opened the kitchen door.

“Dad?” he shouted. “Where are you?”

He didn't really need to ask. The only light in the house was coming from a room to the left, down a short hall that led to the front.

“I'm here,” the answer came, sounding thinner than over the phone. “You'll find me.”

Tregear went down the hall and stopped just short of where the light poured out from an open doorway.

“Let me hear your voice, Dad.”

“What would you like, a few choruses of ‘Old Man River'?”

This was followed by laughter, which was in turn followed by a coughing fit that seemed to go on and on. But the sound let Tregear know that his father was on the other side of the room.

He stepped just inside the doorway while Walter was still trying to catch his breath.

“Ellie, are you all right?”

He asked without taking his eyes from his father, but he knew where she was—close enough that he could have touched her.

“I'm all right.”

Tregear nodded, still without looking at her. He did not dare look at her. If he was to get her out of there alive he had to keep focused on Walter.

He had to create the impression that there was only him and Walter, that no one else mattered.

“Dad, in a few minutes you're going to hear noises coming from the porch. The medics will he picking up Sam, who you'll be happy to hear is still alive.”

A flicker of wrath crossed Walter's face but was quickly suppressed. Walter was smart enough to grasp there was nothing he could do. If he went out there with the idea of stopping it a sniper would get him. If he shot Ellen Ridley—his only means of retaliation—Steve would disappear.

It was the first time that father and son had seen each other in over twenty years. Tregear had the sense that Walter was searching his face for some trace of the boy who had run away so long ago. Perhaps it was easier for Tregear to see the father he had fled.

Beyond this, he found it difficult to look at the clear signs of approaching death—the waxen, sweating face and the wounds in the naked flesh. Walter's left arm even had a faintly bluish cast to it, as if it had already begun to turn putrid.

He was holding an automatic in his right hand, but without pointing it at anyone.

“You've grown up,” he said. “You still looked like a kid in Maryland. Twelve years has really made a difference.”

“You look terrible,” his son answered.

Walter shrugged, which seemed to require considerable effort.

“I've been better.”

Tregear, watching, felt a surge of pity that surprised him.

“Give it up, Dad,” he said quietly. “You need to be in a hospital.”

“The cops would kill me before I ever left this room.”

“Not if you walk out of here with me. What about it, Dad? Will you go to a hospital? Forget about Custer's Last Stand. Life is worth something.”

“Not mine.” Walter waved his right hand dismissively, and his face contracted with what looked like nausea. His skin actually seemed gray. “I'm dead either way. I've got cancer.”

Even though Tregear had told himself something of the sort was likely, he discovered he was shocked. That this man, of all men, should die of anything so prosaic was astonishing.

“Are you sure?”

“Hell yes, I'm sure.” Walter glared at his son with genuine hatred. “My father died of it at about my age. I remember the signs. I don't want to go out like that.”

And then he grinned.

“Take a look at me and see yourself in another twenty years.”

The threat didn't register. Tregear's attention was elsewhere. He could not remember another time when Walter had related any family history.

“How old were you when your father died?”

Walter lifted his head. The question appeared to surprise him.

“Fifteen.” He shook his head and emitted a syllable of laughter. Then he made a face, is if there was a bad taste in his mouth. “He was as mean an old bastard as God ever suffered to breathe. The only things I ever learned from him were the Bible and how to take a whipping. I did better by you.”

All at once Walter sagged in his chair, overcome by a kind of fainting spell, it seemed. Then he straightened up and brought the back of his right hand, still holding the gun, to his forehead.

“Any more questions?” he asked, grinning like a devil.

“Just one. What am I doing here?”

Dad appeared to find this extraordinarily funny. “Don't you think families should stay together?” he asked, between bouts of laughter.

Then he began to cough, but this time he raised his gun and pointed it directly at Tregear's chest. The coughing went on for at least a minute, and when it was done there were flecks of blood on Walter's lips and chin.

And through it all Tregear felt the likelihood that he was about to die and, oddly, he discovered that he was not afraid. The discovery depressed him. This was what it was to be the son of a man like his father, to carry the burden of his hereditary guilt.

“Where is my mother?” he asked. With the gun still aimed at his heart, the question he knew was a deliberate provocation. It could have ended everything. Perhaps it was even meant to.

“In heaven, maybe.”

Walter was still gasping for breath, but he lowered the gun.

“I mean, where did you dump her body after you murdered her?”

“Who remembers? It was a long time ago.”

“Did you at least bury her?”

“Will you shut the fuck up about your mother?” Walter shouted—or tried. His voice was thick, as if he were strangling. “How old were you then? Seven? It's ancient history. You probably don't even remember her.”

“I remember her. I remember her and I loved her. You probably can't comprehend such a thing, and that's a dangerous failure of imagination because it blinds you to other people's motives.”

Walter stood up. It was a ponderous, slow, painful thing to watch. The chair might have been his coffin at the moment of the Last Judgment. On his feet, he swayed slightly.

“I tried,” he said, his eyes cast down. “I tried to live the television dream. I was fond of your mother, I really was. But it just got too hard.”

It was pure theater. He was a man trapped in his own nature. It was beautifully played. He might even have believed it himself.

“And so of course you killed her. Had she found out what you were up to, or had you just gotten bored? Don't forget, I've seen how casually you can take life. I saw what you did to my grandparents.”

“Oh, you mean Betty's folks?” He smiled his sly smile, as if to say,
Okay, so you don't buy it. No hard feelings.

He sank backward into the chair, and instantly his face was a grimace of pain.

“Oh God! This is getting old real fast.”

There were beads of sweat on his face, and a shudder passed through him, as if he felt a sudden chill. He looked fragile enough to crack like an egg.

“Go to the hospital, Dad. Don't put yourself through this.”

“Death is hard, Steve. That's just a fact. God never meant us to leave life on a feather bed.”

“It's not your time unless you want it to be.”

“It's my time—close enough.”

“You really want to die?”

Walter only shrugged. The subject seemed to bore him.

“Okay, Dad. That's your business. But you're not taking the whole world with you.”

For the first time Tregear stepped fully inside the room. He walked over and stood in front of the chair on which Ellen was sitting, blocking her from his father's sight.

“Stand up,” he murmured, glancing quickly over his shoulder. “Do exactly what I tell you.”

Ellen rose behind him, and when she was on her feet she rested the palm of her hand between his shoulder blades. It was a brief gesture, lasting only seconds, but it told him what he needed to know. She would follow his lead.

Walter stared out at them through sullen, hate-filled eyes.

“I know what you've got in mind,” he said, and a wicked smile twitched at his mouth. “But I'll probably get off two or three shots before she reaches the doorway. I'll aim low. I'll hit her in the legs and I'm bound to stop her. And then I'll kill her at my perfect convenience.”

“I don't think so, Dad.” Tregear shook his head. “Just let me tell you how it works from this point on. At the first sound of a shot the police will storm the house. They'll break down the doors, they'll come through the windows if they have to, but they'll come. At the outside you'll have maybe ten seconds. And then you'll die sitting there in that chair.”

“But I'll take you with me.”

Tregear managed a brief laugh. “You'll probably do that anyway. But the point is, our little conversation will be over.

“My guess is she's not worth that to you.”

Over his shoulder, and in a voice that, were it not so breathless, would have been a shout, he said, “Run! Now!”

Ellen didn't hesitate. She ran for the doorway.

Walter raised his gun, but he didn't fire. And in an instant she was gone. He slumped back in his chair.

“That's twice you've scored on me,” he said. “The question is, why is she worth it to you?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Don't tell me you've gone and found love.”

“There's that. But more than anything there's the fact that I should have turned you in back in Arkansas. By failing in that, by not taking that risk, I made myself an accomplice to all the monstrous things you've done since. You've killed all the women you're going to. I don't want Ellen to be your last victim.”

“You're reserving that honor for yourself?” Walter laughed at his own joke.

“I'm not eligible. I've been your victim most of my life.”

 

33

The ambulance crew who were lifting their patient onto a stretcher knew there was only twenty or so feet separating them from an armed psychopath, so when the kitchen door flew open they almost dropped poor Sam.

Ellen fell to her knees beside the stretcher and reached out her hand to touch Sam's face, but in the last instant she hesitated.

“Is he…?”

“Yeah, he's alive,” the medic said, almost in a whisper as he was prepping him for an IV. “But just barely. We've got to get him out of here.”

Within thirty seconds they were maneuvering the stretcher through the outside door, and Ellen hovered near Sam's head, touching his face with her fingertips, until, outside on the flagstone walkway, they lowered the wheels and she remembered that she wasn't going with him.

She found Sam's service pistol easily. It was lying in the shadow of the lounge chair, where apparently no one had noticed it. Then, as she sat on the floor, she opened the cylinder. There were five live rounds inside so she closed it, being careful to align the empty chamber with the firing pin.

Then, as she held the thing in the palm of her hand, all the fear she had been pushing aside flooded in on her and she began to weep.

She couldn't help it. She hated herself for it, hated the weakness she was exposing, but she simply could not hold it back.