Children of the Storm (11 page)

    Her throat burned as if a fire had been set inside of it, and it was too raw to permit, yet, a cry for help.

    She passed the bench where she had been sitting when the man had first appeared from the arbor, kept on going.

    A dozen paces from the edge of the garden, on the verge of the open lawn where the light of Seawatch spilled more profusely, Sonya tripped on a loose stone in the walk, fell.

    She tried to get up.

    She could not.

    Her heart racing, so winded that she could only barely get her breath, she passed out.

    

    When she woke, she did not know where she was-though she definitely knew where she
wasn't.
She was not in her huge Polynesian bed on the second floor of Seawatch, not in the center of that soft, queen-sized mattress where she had spent the past eleven nights. The surface beneath her was hard and somewhat chilly.

    She lay still for a long while, trying to remember what had happened and where she was. She hated, more than anything else, to wake up in a strange place and not know, for a few moments, how she had gotten there. When her parents were killed in the automobile accident, she had gone through a number of scenes like that. First, in the middle of the night, she had been moved to the neighbors' house while she slept, her parents already an hour or so dead, her babysitter sent home; in the morning, when she had opened her eyes, her heart had risen instantly into her throat, for she recognized nothing around her. That day, she was taken in by an aunt and woke in that house the following morning, confused, somewhat frightened, longing for the familiarity of her own bedroom with the dolls she knew so well, the scatter of knicknacks and souvenirs that instantly reassured her when she woke there among them. The day before the funeral, she was moved in with her grandmother, where she was to stay, and was faced with a third strange setting to grow accustomed to. She remembered the fear in the morning, when she opened her eyes on the unfamiliar ceiling, lying in a bed which she did not remember and was sure she'd never used before, a sense of impermanence sweeping over her like a black tide…

    Suddenly, she recalled the corresponding blackness in the tunnel of the bougainvillea arbor, the blackness that had closed in on her and made her faint, and she opened her eyes like shutters flying up on two small, twin cameras.

    The starry sky lay overhead.

    Part of a moon.

    She seemed to be alive, something she was surprised to find.

    She was stretched out at the edge of the gardens, lying half across the stone walk and half in the grass, where she had fallen. One arm was flung out to her side, the other above her head so that, had she been standing, she would have looked as if she were preparing to do a flamenco dance. Despite her situation, she was amused at that thought. She moved, seemed to be all right, sat up.

    That was a mistake. Her head began to throb as if there were a tiny man inside beating at her skull with a sledgehammer. A fierce pain arced over both eyebrows, and it seemed the lasting sort. Also, her throat felt swollen and raw, and she wondered if she would be able to swallow a long, cold glass of water. That drink was what she desired more than anything else on earth.

    She touched the sides of her neck, carefully, gently. It
was
swollen, but the pain was not so terrible, more of a tenderness, like a sprained ankle or pulled muscle.

    She got slowly to her feet, like an invalid doubting the effect of some new miracle drug, reached out and stopped the world from spinning around and around like a top. When it settled down, and she managed to keep her balance about as easily as a girl on a tightrope might, she turned toward Seawatch, blinked at the pale light in its windows and, with a small sigh, began the long walk across the north lawn.

    It was good to be alive. She didn't know how she has escaped the man in the arbor, why he hadn't given chase and found her, but she
did
know it was perfectly wonderful to be alive. She hoped she could stay that way a while longer.

    

    “You didn't see anything?”

    “Nothing at all, Rudolph.”

    “Not even a glimpse of his face?”

    “No.”

    “Think.”

    “I have thought.”

    “When you grappled with him, what could you tell about his hair? Bald? Short? Long?”

    “I didn't notice.”

    “Might he have had a mustache?”

    “I don't think so.”

    “How do you know, Sonya? In your struggles, did you touch this man's face? Did you feel that he was clean shaven?”

    “No.”

    “Then you can't really be sure about the mustache. And he might even have had a beard.”

    “He might have.”

    “How large a man was he?”

    “He seemed huge.”

    She shuddered at the memory.

    Rudolph squinted at her, as if he were ready to strike her with one of his hammy fists. Instead, he struck the top of the kitchen table, and he said, “I didn't ask you how the man
seemed.
I asked you how he
was.
Was he a large man-or was he small? Was he fat? Thin? Or merely average?”

    “He wasn't fat or thin,” she said. “Neither extreme. But he was quite strong, muscular.”

    Her voice was a thin, strained hissing, like air escaping from a pressurized spraycan. Each word pained her, made her mouth run dry and her tight throat constrict even further.

    “How tall?”

    “I don't know.”

    He grimaced.

    “Well, I don't,” she said.

    He said, “No taller than you?”

    “Taller than me, yes.”

    “See, you do know!”

    She said nothing.

    He said, “Taller than me?”

    She looked at him as he stood-six feet four inches or better. “Not so tall as you,” she said.

    “Around six feet?”

    “Maybe.”

    “Think. You can't be sure?”

    “No.”

    “For God's sake, Rudolph!” Bill Peterson snapped.

    The bodyguard looked at him, waiting patiently for the rest of his outburst.

    Peterson said, “The girl has had an absolutely horrible experience. You can see that she's in pain, and she's still frightened. On top of all that, she's tired. Yet you continue to act as if what she has to tell you is vital to-”

    “
It is vital,”
Saine said. His voice was firm, cold, final, and he nodded his burly head in the manner of a wise man who, having spoken, expects no expressions of doubt or contradiction.

    “I'm okay,” Sonya told Peterson. She tried to smile at him, though that expression caused her a twinge of pain beneath the chin, and she reached out to squeeze his hand.

    “Six feet tall, then,” Saine said, musing over what little data they had managed to puzzle out. “That's something, anyway.”

    “Damn little,” Bill said. “I'm around six feet tall, as are Henry and Kenneth Blenwell. And if Sonya misjudged by a couple of inches either way -quite an easy, understandable error to make considering the situation that she was in-we could include both you and Leroy Mills.”

    “Ah, yes,” Saine said. “But we
have
eliminated the women.” He had a rueful smile on his face. “Unless, of course, one of them is in league with the man who attacked Sonya.”

    “And you forget,” Peterson said, “that whoever this man is, he's most likely an outsider, a stranger, perhaps someone we've never seen. In which case, your guess at his height is even more worthless.”

    Saine gave Peterson one last, close scrutiny, then turned back to Sonya to resume the questioning. “Did this man in the garden say anything to you?”

    “Nothing.”

    “Not a single word in all that time?”

    She hesitated.

    He saw the hesitation, leaned across the table and said, “Well?”

    Sonya said, “I believe he shouted at me, when I first stamped on his foot and broke away from him.”

    “What did he shout?”

    “A single word-something like 'Stop' or 'Hey.'”

    “You didn't recognize his voice?”

    “I wasn't thinking about that, just then. He might have been someone I know, and he might not have been. It's hard to say-from a single word.”

    “His clothes?”

    “I didn't see them.”

    “You said he was wearing tennis shoes.”

    “I think he was, canvas tops of some kind.”

    “Not much help,” Peterson said. “Nearly everyone in the tropics owns at least one pair of sneakers.” He looked at Rudolph Saine and said, “I'm wearing socks and loafers right now, if you want to check.”

    “I know you are,” Saine said. “I already checked.”

    “You're a tough case,” Peterson told him.

    “I have to be.”

    “If you suspect everyone in Seawatch, Bill said, “why don't you line us all up against the wall, like they do in the movies-then make us take our shoes off? If one of us has a bloody set of toes, then…” He snapped his fingers. “Voila! The case is solved!”

    Saine shrugged his massive shoulders, unmoved by the suggestion, which Peterson had made half in sarcasm. “If the man was wearing socks and sneakers,” Saine said, “it is unlikely that Miss Carter drew blood. His toes may be bruised-and they may be unscarred. Even if I were to find evidence of such an injury on one of you, what good would that evidence do me? You may have hurt yourself in some other manner… Such flimsy 'evidence' would never be admissable in court.”

    “Still,” Peterson said, “at least you'd have some idea who-”

    “Yes,” Saine agreed. “And the man I suspected would know he was suspected. He would lay low. He would become even more careful than he has been to date. If he finally did kill the children, he would have himself protected with a cast iron alibi, because he would know that nothing else but cast iron would stop me from moving against him.”

    “In other words, you want to give him enough rope to hang himself,” Peterson said.

    Saine said nothing.

    “Isn't that-sort of playing with the children's lives?”

    Saine said, “Mr. Dougherty trusts my judgment. This is my job, not yours. You must rest easy and not let it worry you so.” He smiled a non-smile.

    Sonya squeezed Bill's hand all the harder, to let him know that, if he were arguing with Saine for her sake or because he was angry with the bodyguard's treatment of her, none of this was necessary. She was tired of anger, raised voices, so much suspicion. She would just as soon get the questions and answers done with, no matter how pointless they might seem, so that she could go upstairs and get into bed-perhaps with an icebag at her throat.

    Bill seemed to take the hint, for he did not respond to Saine this time. He just sat there at the table, beside her, staring across at the big man, looking angry but powerless.

    Saine said, “Was this man wearing a watch, Sonya?”

    “No.”

    “Any rings?”

    “I don't know.”

    “His hands were around your throat for a long time, as you tell the story. Now, surely, you'd know whether or not he was wearing any rings. A ring would gouge at your skin, more than likely. At the very least, it would make an especially painful point.”

    “It all hurt so much, I didn't notice if one place hurt more than another,” she said. She rubbed her throat lightly. The swelling had gone down a bit, but the bruises had begun to appear, brown-purple and ugly. She hated for everyone to see her like this. She caught a glance from Leroy Mills who was sitting on a chair by the refrigerator; he blushed, looked down at his hands. He seemed as embarrassed by her bruises as she was.

    “Was he left- or right-handed, Sonya?” Rudolph Saine asked.

    She blinked in surprise and, for a moment, thought that he was kidding her. When she saw that he was not being funny, that he was perfectly serious, she said, “How on earth should I know?”

    “When he grabbed hold of you-you'll remember that you said he grabbed you several times during your tussel under the arbor-did he always use the same hand?”

    “I'm not sure.”

    “Can you remember a single incident? The first time he grabbed you, was it with his left or right hand? Which shoulder did he take hold of, Sonya?”

    She shook her head. “I can't say.”

    “Try.”

    “It was so dark, and the whole thing was such a nightmare of grabbing, hitting and clutching that I can't remember anything about it-except the chaos and terror.”

    Saine nodded and looked away from her. He faced Peterson, seemed to gather his thoughts for a moment, folded his big hands together on top of the table, and said, “Bill, where were you between eight-thirty this evening and-say, ten o'clock?”

    “On the
Lady Jane”
Peterson said, without hesitation.

    “What were you doing there?”

    “Bedding down for the night.”

    “You have a room in Seawatch,” Saine said.

    “And, as you know perfectly well, I almost never use it, except to store my things. If the weather isn't bad, I always sleep in the forward stateroom on the
Lady Jane.”

    “Why?” Saine asked.

    “I like it there.”

    “Why, though, when you have such excellent quarters here in the main house, do you choose to sleep in the cramped stateroom of a small boat?”

    “It's not so cramped,” Peterson said. “And it's air-conditioned. Besides, I'm a man of the sea, not of the land. I was raised on boats by parents who were sea lovers, and I've worked most of my adult life on one kind of vessel or another. On the other hand, you're a man of the land; you're perfectly comfortable in a big house, in your own room. We are different types, you see. Rather than four plaster walls, I prefer the slap of waves against a hull and the smell of open water.”