Isolation (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

It was too dark to see. It was certainly too dark to be careening headlong through the darkness. Faye pictured disastrous possibilities ranging from the ridiculous—running full tilt into the trunk of a stout tree—to the mundane—putting a foot down into a hole and breaking an ankle. Ridiculous, mundane accidents like those could put her on the ground with a fractured skull or a broken tibia protruding from her skin.

If Faye did something stupid that took her out of the action, Joe would be running into danger alone. She had an urgent need to be careful, but she was always careful. The only extra safety measure she could take would be to pray. So she prayed. And she kept dodging trees and trusting that no holes would open up under her feet.

She couldn't have kept going if she hadn't trusted Joe with everything she had. He, too, was plunging into impenetrable blackness, but he had a hawk's eyes and she didn't. He walked these paths every day, even the ones that led nowhere interesting. He knew them. The soles of his feet knew them. Faye trusted Joe, all the way to the soles of his feet, so she listened for his footfalls so that she could run in his footsteps. Joe's ability to move noiselessly through the forest had put many a rabbit on their table, so she had to listen with her whole being. Only Joe's wife could have tracked him by sound.

Faye's eyes might not have been as good as Joe's, but her nose was doing its job. She knew why Joe had burst out of the house and run headlong into danger. She smelled smoke. She hadn't smelled it at first, but now it was unmistakable.

Faye had no idea how far she was from the house, but she had run long enough to be gasping for air. Any minute, she would follow Joe around the broad curve in the trail that skirted the water's edge before turning back to the west. Surely, he didn't plan to run off the end of the island, nor would he have run all this way if he only intended to turn around and run back. They must be near their destination.

The smell of smoke grew with each step.

***

Sly left Emma and Michael in the basement, scaling the staircases and the tall ladder between him and the cupola with the speed of a man half his age. If danger was coming, whether it be in the form of a gun or a human or a raging fire, there was no better vantage point than the cupola to get a look at it.

The ladder took him up through the cupola's wooden floor. He saw nothing.

There was nothing outside the windows but blackness. Now and then, the wind brought a breath of air that made Sly think, ever so slightly, of smoke, but he couldn't pinpoint its direction. Where was the fire?

He stood in the middle of the cupola, facing the four directions one at a time—south, west, north, east. Nothing.

He imagined that he saw the occasional glint of water to the south, west, and north, but it was only because he knew the Gulf was out there. Starlight alone wasn't bright enough to show him those waves. To the east, the long axis of Joyeuse Island stretched out. He knew this, but he couldn't see it. Sly felt in his heart that the danger lurked in that direction. He stood silhouetted in the east window and peered into the darkness, looking for his son and praying that he would be able to make sure that Joe found his family safe when he came walking home.

***

Gerry had been waiting too long for a response to his last text to Faye.

How long had he been waiting? Five minutes. A woman sitting at a window with nothing to do but web-surf and watch for criminals had plenty of time to answer a text. Five minutes was too much time.

He checked his phone for the time and compared it to the time of his text. No, not five minutes. Eight minutes. That was way too long.

He dialed her number. No answer.

The feeling that something wasn't right took him off the back porch and into the house, where Faye wasn't waiting at the parlor window. His heart sank when he saw her cell phone on the windowsill. There was no way to find out where she'd gone.

The cold, sick feeling at his core took him onto the front porch, where Sly wasn't sitting in the rocking chair with his ax in hand.

Thumbing the button that dialed Joe's phone and clamping his own phone to his ear, he sprinted down the front entry stairs to the front yard. Joe didn't answer.

As Gerry turned and ran through the basement door beneath the front porch, he prayed that he would find Emma and Michael safely where they were supposed to be. He found nothing but Joe's cell phone lying beside the banister of the front staircase, face-down in the dirt.

***

Joe only paused for an instant, because that's all the time it took to do the mathematics of projectile flight in his head. If he launched himself silently, traveling at the proper angle and the proper speed, he would hit an unaware target.

Delia sat staring into a small campfire. If he launched himself now, she wouldn't see him coming before his dense body, curled into a compact crouch, struck her like a cannonball. Conjuring the scene in his mind's eye, he could see the angle at which the rifle would fly out of her hands and he knew how far it would fly before it landed. When he had calculated that the rifle would fly far enough to render her unarmed, he jumped.

***

Faye couldn't believe that Delia hadn't heard them coming. Joe's footfalls made no more sound in the forest than they ever did, so he might have been able to sneak up on her, but he wasn't alone and Faye didn't have Joe's knack for silence.

Faye hadn't been making as much noise as she might have, since her boots were still lying unlaced on the parlor floor, but she knew how many sticks had snapped beneath her feet because she had felt all their splinters cut into her soles. She had made plenty of noise breaking those sticks, enough to catch the attention of someone listening for trouble, but Delia had been staring abstractedly into the fire ever since Faye came into sight. Maybe the hiss and crackle of its flames had masked the sound of her footsteps and her breathing.

By the time Joe paused for the leap onto Delia's back, Faye was fully winded. Crouched on her hands and knees, she fought for breath. Her wheezing had to have been audible, but still Delia sat there, clothed head-to-toe in camouflage clothing in the exact dappled-green needed to hide in woodlands like the ones on Joyeuse Island. Delia warmed her well-manicured hands over the small fire and its flickering light played on her glossy pink fingernails. Faye could see those hands trembling in the orange light. What was the woman planning to do that made her so nervous?

Delia's weapon said that her plans involved death. That weapon, a long and sleek rifle that looked capable of taking out a deer from three hundred yards, lay across her lap. Perhaps the rifle was the answer to the question of why Delia didn't hear Joe until he was upon her. Perhaps long hours of target practice had dulled her hearing.

Faye was frightened by the mental image of Delia spending hour after hour pumping bullets into paper targets, growing ever more accurate and precise in her ability to put them into living people. This was the kind of practice that would render a person capable of putting a bullet into Liz's back. It would also render that person capable of putting a bullet into someone standing watch on the porch of Faye's home or sitting at the window of her child's bedroom or even standing silhouetted in the window of a cupola three stories above the ground.

Delia could do it. It was possible.

Faye had seen the photo, the one she had texted to Joe. It had been part of an article about Delia and her second husband that had been published in
Stock and Barrel
. Her husband had been one of those hunters who liked to shoot really big things. Moose, bears, elk. The article had detailed the intensive marksmanship training he'd given his young wife, and it had featured a photo of the happy couple clad in camo and holding rifles…scary-looking rifles with scopes.

She and Joe must not let Delia leave this spot, not with a rifle that would give her the capacity to take out Sly, Gerry, Emma and—oh God— little Michael in four quick shots.

And for what? If Delia had killed Liz because she'd attracted the attention of the rich old man she'd targeted to be her third dead husband, and if she had been stalking Faye and Emma for the same reason, then Faye guessed the woman was willing to kill all her rivals. Why shouldn't she also be willing to kill Sly, Gerry, Joe, and Michael, too? Why leave witnesses?

Lovely young Delia didn't fit the profile for a mass murderer, so she might have been able to pull it off. Faye imagined Delia, beautiful and impassive, watching the endless national news coverage that would ensue if six people were found shot to death on a lonely island. She would watch calmly, secure in the knowledge that no one had any reason to suspect her.

The events after that were predictable. Delia would try to get Oscar to put a wedding ring on the finger that still bore the marks of her last dead husband's rings. She would probably succeed. And Oscar would soon succumb to a lingering illness.

In the last second before Joe jumped, Delia raised her head slightly and Faye got a good look into her face. Her unfocused eyes looked drugged. Together with the rifle and her trembling hands, those dazed eyes helped Faye shove the last clue into place. They showed her how Delia had managed to kill Liz, terrorize Emma, leave a butt-print on the bluff above Emma's house, and come out to Joyeuse Island long enough to leave a footprint, all without Oscar ever noticing she was gone.

Delia's second husband had been the hunter who taught her to shoot that rifle, but her first husband had owned a chain of pharmacies. Delia had worked at his store. She'd had years to pilfer a stash of amphetamines to keep her awake when she needed to be up all night. She probably also had a stash of tranquilizers to help her sleep when she needed to sleep or to slip into Oscar's drinks when she needed him unconscious. And Delia's second husband had died from Alzheimer's, an ailment that, like her first husband's kidney failure, would be pretty damn easy to fake for a woman who had once had access to a drugstore full of pharmaceuticals.

Before Joe's body struck Delia's, he passed between her body and the fire, and his shadow fell on her face. She jerked backward, showing the twitchy reaction time of a woman on speed, but there was nothing she could do to stop him. They went down in the dirt and the rifle landed four feet away.

Faye knew instantly that it was her job to get it.

***

Joe had the upper hand. He was larger and he had struck first. He had Delia's shoulders pinned to the ground, and Faye could see him working to immobilize her flailing arms. Delia wasn't a heavy woman, but she was tall and long-limbed. Joe needed some leverage to get her under control, so he raised himself on his knees and shifted his body weight forward.

As he focused on her right arm, her left arm shot out to the side, groping for the rifle. It was out of reach but she found the next best thing, a long branch that she'd been using to poke the coals of her fire.

The branch was stout and Delia swung it through the air like a bullwhip. Faye heard the crack when it broke against Joe's temple. He shook his head, ponytail slinging through the air, and she caught sight of his eyes. For a moment, they looked as dazed as Delia's. He quickly gathered his wits and pinned her right shoulder with his knee, grappling with her left hand for control of the branch.

Faye saw that she could end this, if she could just get to the rifle. She stepped into the open, revealing herself. Delia struggled harder, knowing that the odds of her getting the upper hand over Joe had just dropped even further. As she arched her back to get a look at Faye, she also got a look at the piece of tree branch clutched in her own hand. Its end glowed where it had been resting in the burning fire.

Delia knew a weapon when she saw it. She raked the branch across Joe's throat and the red coals broke off and scattered.

Faye heard her husband gasp. A streak of soot and an angry white-and-red mark slashed diagonally across his neck, and the sight gave her an electric shock of sympathetic pain. She covered the ground between her and the rifle in a heartbeat.

Delia used that heartbeat to drive the burning end of the branch into the hollow at the base of Joe's throat. He jerked back, hard, and Delia used that off-balance moment to shift her weight beneath him, throwing him onto the ground beside her. She straddled him, pinning his arms under her knees and holding the branch high. It was still tipped with glowing coals that lit her smiling face. Searching for her other adversary, she looked over the shoulder and saw that the rifle was aimed at her and Faye was staring down its barrel.

Faye had once stood on the other end of a rifle barrel while the woman who held it pulled the trigger. If it hadn't misfired, she would have been dead. She had watched Joe pull the trigger of another rifle on the same woman. Together, they had watched her die. Faye herself, however, had never held a rifle in her hands. Her entire experience with the real-world use of firearms consisted of firing a revolver once at a woman and hitting her boat's gas tank instead. The shot had been effective, because the exploding gas tank had absolutely taken the woman out, but Faye couldn't take credit for good aim. After that day, she had spent many afternoons practicing with the same gun, so that she'd know how to use it the next time the real world required her to do so.

Where was that gun now? Glancing down, she saw that she had carefully laid it on the ground behind her right foot so that she could use both hands to grip the more dangerous weapon. If Delia wanted that handgun, she was going to have to come through Faye to get it.

Delia put a hand on Joe's throat and pressed down hard, fighting off his big hands as she bore down. He couldn't breathe.

Faye had only an instant to decide what to do. She could almost have reached out and touched Delia and Joe with the tip of the rifle in her hands, so she suspected that its scope would be useless. It had been designed to be effective over long distance, not at point-blank range. She was too close to worry about the bullet dropping in flight, so she shouldn't have to worry about hitting Joe, not if she aimed passably well. If she intended to shoot Delia, she could almost certainly do it. (And, to be honest with herself, she had to acknowledge that shooting Delia with such a behemoth from this distance probably meant killing her.)