Blood Ties (42 page)

At least she wasn't sobbing. Her tears flowed without a sound.

Finally she was able to force herself to stop. Then for several seconds she stared down at Sam's revolver.

She had no idea where her nine-millimeter automatic might be. It had been years since she had even held a revolver, but at the police academy she had trained with one no different from Sam's. She knew how to use it.

And now was the time.

*   *   *

“I never made you a victim,” Walter said finally. He sounded hurt. “You just took off.”

Tregear nodded, then sat down on the chair lately vacated by Ellen. “That's right. I just took off. After I found out that you'd lied about what happened to my mother. After I found a dead woman in the back of your van. I figured I was probably next. Does that strike you as an unreasonable conclusion?”

He folded his arms over his chest, apparently perfectly relaxed. His eyes seemed fixed on the toes of his shoes.

“Then you killed my grandparents,” he went on, “setting the stage so all I had to do was look in the front window to see them dead. Don't say you didn't expect me to go rushing through the door which you had so cunningly booby-trapped.

“Then I had to run away again. I joined the Navy on the mistaken theory they would ship me out to sea and I'd be safe. I live under a name I took out of a novel. Until Ellie I've never allowed myself to get too close to anyone against that inevitable day when we'd cross paths again. And now here we are.”

Finally, he looked at his father. He smiled, not very nicely. He was done.

“You've been chasing me.” Walter stared at him sullenly. “You've hunted me for years.
I
was the quarry, not you. I've known that since you tried to sell me to the cops in Maryland. How many years ago was that? I would have left you alone.”

“You could have left me alone in Ohio, but you didn't. Don't kid me, Dad. You've always been a great one for tying up loose ends.

“And now we're both done hunting. Within the next half hour or so, you'll probably be dead. I expect I'll be making the trip with you. And the circus will go on, probably for years. You'll be famous, Dad. They'll write books about you. But at least there won't be any more Eugenia Lockwoods, or Harriet Murdochs or Sally Wilkes.”

“I did them all a favor.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Isn't it obvious? Where have
you
been living?” Walter was so near death that the contemptuous little wave of his hand collapsed almost immediately. “Tell me, Steve, do you believe there is such a place as hell?”

“No.”

“Well, there is. But it doesn't wait for us after death—my old man got that wrong. We're in it this minute. And it isn't sin that makes this world hell. That was another of my old man's mistakes. It just is. It is because God made it so, and He made it so because He hates us. Who was the guy who said that ‘Hell is other people'?”

“Sartre.”

“Well, he got that wrong. He got it wrong and my dad got it wrong. Hell is us. We're each our own hell. And God is right to hate us. So we suffer through every second of living, and suffering is the only way out. Those women are free. And soon I'll be free.”

He closed his eyes. For about fifteen seconds Tregear wasn't sure he hadn't already crossed over. Then Walter drew a shallow, ragged breath and let it out.

Slowly, his attention refocused on his son. He smiled.

“You know, the way I feel and using my right hand, I'm not even sure I'd hit you.”

“But you'll try, right?”

It was virtually a dare. Walter was not going to have the pleasure of seeing him afraid. Live or die, Tregear would deny him that satisfaction.

Walter looked down at the gun in his hand. He seemed to be measuring its weight.

“You're not afraid to die?” he asked.

“My fear is all used up, Dad.”

And it was even true. Despair brought with it a kind of serenity. After all these years it was finally ending. The bill had at last come due. Death would almost be a relief.

The hand came up, and the gun with it. One squeeze of the trigger and the bullet would have gone through Tregear's throat.

For about ten seconds his life was measured out to him one breath at a time. He expected to die.

The shot that killed him would bring the SWAT team that had no doubt arrived by now and Walter would die sitting in that chair. Then, at last the nightmare would be over. Death was a price that seemed worth paying.

“Still not afraid?”

“Try me, Dad.”

In an instant, the point of the gun twitched away. It was aimed at nothing.

He's toying with me, Tregear thought to himself. He'll wait until I really believe I might live, and then he'll kill me.

He stood up, taking his time so as not to spook his father into anything. He just preferred to be on his feet. It seemed a more dignified way to die.

*   *   *

The door to the kitchen was still open. With Sam's pistol held in both hands, Ellen stepped across the threshold.

There were no more tears, and her heart felt like ice. The only emotion she was conscious of was hatred.

She had hated very few people in her life—if asked, she probably would have said that she regarded such emotional extravagances as unprofessional—but in the last half hour or so she had learned to hate Walter. He had badly frightened her; he had killed little Rita Blandish. But neither of those was the real reason.

He was threatening to kill the man she loved. He wanted to rob her of more than her life. She hated him for that.

For working she preferred rubber-soled Mary Janes with a suede/poly-mesh upper and a Velcro strap. They weren't very stylish, but they were light and as comfortable as running shoes. They were also as silent as if you were barefoot. They never squeaked as she crossed the linoleum kitchen floor.

At the entrance to the hallway she heard the muffled drone of conversation. At first she could distinguish only Walter's voice, but a moment more and she heard Steve. She couldn't make out the words, but the cadence was as familiar to her as a favorite tune.

A memory came into her mind, vivid as any immediate event. Once, during the brief few days they had lived together, she had come back to Steve's apartment, gone up to his office and found him seated in his chair with Gwendolyn perched on his shoulder. Her front paws were in his hair as she looked over his head at the computer screen.

From almost the first moment Gwendolyn had trusted him, and in such matters animals were wiser than people.

Steve had come into this house, where he knew a man waited to kill him. He had brought no weapon, no defense except a vast courage, and he had put his own body between Ellen and death. It was the only way he knew. He was simply not meant to be a destroyer.

In that sense at least, he was not his father's son.

As she approached the doorway to Sam's dining room she could hear their conversation quite distinctly. Walter was gasping for air, as if every word was a hard-won victory over death.

“You're afraid to die,” he said. “Maybe not this very moment, but in another hour you'd be glad to be still breathing. Some things you just have to learn the hard way.”

That was it. There was no more time.

Her gun held in both hands, she stepped into the doorway. Walter was seated across the room from her, his little automatic pointed at Steve.

He turned his head in her direction and for an instant his eyes narrowed in surprise.

She had him cold. She pulled the trigger and his right arm went slack as a bullet hole appeared just below his left eye. He was already dead, but she couldn't stop herself. Without realizing what she did, she fired twice more and Walter slumped sideways in his chair.

She waited through the longest five seconds of her life, not letting her gaze wander from his now lifeless face, ready to kill him all over again.

There was no need.

She turned her head and for the first time, with something like surprise, saw Steve, not more than six feet away. He just stood there, staring at her as if at an apparition.

“I had to come back,” she said.

 

34

Sam had been out of the hospital a month, but he hadn't yet recovered his strength. When he walked his dachshunds he used a cane. Ellen came to visit him every Sunday morning and they took the dogs out together.

Hard as they tried to avoid it, eventually the conversation always came around to The Case.

The media frenzy had died down at last. For three weeks it seemed there was no other story on the six o'clock news, but at last the public, and even the reporters, had grown bored with it. Walter's body was still in a refrigerated vault at the city morgue, but he was already relegated to the uninteresting past. Sometime or other it would all come back, when the books started to come out and if the much-talked-about TV movie ever got made, but for the present it was all just another case file in the computer.

For Sam and Ellen the story was never over.

Today's little tidbit was that the FBI had finally scored a hit on the fingerprints. Forty-two years ago an Indiana teenager named Walter Brewer had been arraigned in juvenile court on the charge of assault with intent to commit rape. Pending a hearing, the boy had been remanded to the custody of his father, Stephen Brewer, a local clergyman of unsavory reputation. Father and son had then promptly disappeared.

“The mills of the gods grind slowly,” Sam announced as they walked up a difficult bit of hill on their way to a public park much beloved by his dachshunds. “Juvenile records from that long ago wouldn't even have made it into the computer. Somebody must have searched them by eye. Don't the cops in Indiana have anything better to do with their time?”

“Maybe some eighty-year-old juvie officer remembered the case,” Ellen suggested. “It would be the sort of thing to stick in your mind.”

“You mean a teenage rapist with Elmer Gantry for a father? In the Midwest they're probably as common as mushrooms.”

They were silent until they reached the park, and then Sam sat down on a bench to rest and let Ellen walk the pack around to water the shrubbery.

When she came back, Sam took the dogs off their leads to let them wander about. Strictly speaking, this was illegal, but they were well behaved and never strayed very far from Daddy.

“I'll bet we'll hear a lot more about Walter Brewer.” Sam was watching contemplatively as Daisy, the baby of the pack, dug in a flower bed. “Assault with intent doesn't sound like a first offense. Probably he was a bad boy before he reached puberty. The case files should make interesting reading.”

He leaned forward, his hands laced together over the handle of his cane, and frowned.

“But I won't be reading them. When my convalescent leave is over, I'm putting in my papers and retiring. Millie is adamant.”

For a moment Ellen was sufficiently distressed to be at a loss for words.

“What'll I do for a partner?” she asked finally.

“What are you doing for one now?”

“Nothing. I'm still cleaning up the bits and pieces from Walter.”

“Well, when Walter is put to bed they'll give you a new partner, probably one as green as you were when I got you.”

“Then who's going to be my Father Confessor and Guide?”

“You don't need one anymore. That's just another reason I'm retiring.”

He glanced at Ellen, who seemed close to tears, then looked away.

“I'm not moving to Oregon or anything like that,” he said. “You can still come and walk the dogs with me. You just don't need a mentor anymore. Your handling of the Walter case was masterful.”

“I had help.”

“Some—we always get
some
help—but not very much from me. If I'd retired last year you still would have broken the case.”

“Not without Steve.”

“Maybe not, but you made all the right moves, all on your own. You don't need me anymore, Ellie. You've earned your stripes. You're a big girl now.”

He shrugged, as if owning to an absurd weakness.

“And I'm sick of it. I never want to see another dead body in a car trunk. I think I would have quit a long time ago if not for you. You've earned this. My retirement is your coming-of-age. You're a veteran homicide inspector now.
You'll
be the teacher.”

It was time to change the subject.

“By the way, how is Steve these days?”

“I don't really know.” Ellen shrugged. Today seemed a day for unpleasant revelations. “He's still in the hospital.”

“And he still doesn't want to see you?”

“He's relented. Friday I got a call from his shrink. I'm going down there this afternoon.”

“Well, give me a call afterwards and let me know how he is.” Sam laughed suddenly. “He's a clever bugger. I'm glad he didn't take after his old man because we'd never have caught him.”

“And now he's in the nut ward.”

“Oh well, aren't we all?” Sam stood up and whistled for the dogs. “Time we were heading back. We have to celebrate my retirement. I think the lunch menu is beer and lasagna.”

“In the kitchen?”

“Until Millie can pick out new wallpaper for the dining room.”

*   *   *

Ellen left Daly City at one-fifteen. She had to make a two o'clock shuttle flight to the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, and then it was an hour's drive to Camp Pendleton. She had a four-thirty appointment with a Dr. Stockton at the Naval hospital there and she didn't want to be late. That interview was the last hurdle before seeing Steve, who had disappeared from view the night Walter died.

They had walked out of Sam's house together, holding on to each other as if each was afraid the other would fall over. Then because of her head wound the Daly City police had insisted on putting Ellen into an ambulance and taking her to the hospital.