Wicked Fix (49 page)

The thoroughness of it was terrifying. "Once you'd

decided that night was the night, you hurried to his

house, waited until Sam left, took the scalpel, and went

back downtown," I said. "But what if things went

wrong, and it turned out you couldn't use the scalpel

after all?"

His face flattened stubbornly. "Then I'd find another

way. But mostly, they didn't go wrong. Later the

tie was on the street where your ex dropped it. Reuben

picked it up, had it with him."

"And then," the last piece dropped into place,

"Weasel saw you with Reuben. Weasel was on the seawall

that night, wasn't he?"

Memo to self: When you're looking for connections,

remember that the absence of a connection might

also be meaningful. ...

"Weasel saw you," I went on, "but you didn't notice

it until it was too late. You couldn't afford anyone

remembering you were with Reuben on the night Reuben

died. So you had to go back and kill Weasel Bo

dine, and what better way to confuse things than to use

the method everyone in town thought Reuben had

used, long ago?"

He nodded smugly. "Now you're getting it."

It had been yet another improvisation; he was

good at them and had used them skillfully. Because it

wasn't enough to have a careful plan; to make a thing

like this work, you had to use every happenstance, too,

seize it and turn it to your advantage.

Which he had. "You've got guts, I'll give you that

much," I said, still hoping to put a new spin on things.

"The poison ..."

"Rat killer," he confirmed. "I tried not to use too

much. It wasn't supposed to work so fast."

At this, Ellie got into the act, trying to keep him

talking. "That doesn't sound like you, Mike, always

ready for anything. I mean, you didn't check on the

dose?"

He looked impatient. "You can't just call someone

and ask that kind of question. Besides, if it didn't work

the first time, I'd get to kill him twice, wouldn't I?"

Keep him talking ... I thought hard. "Reuben

was drunk, and he was probably drugged, too. You

invited him to take a ride. In the cemetery you lured

him from the car. ..."

He took over the story eagerly, this being, after all,

the last time he would ever be able to tell it. "I was

ready to drug him myself. Reached out to one of my

old buddies, got something to use on him."

Hideously, he produced a syringe. "I didn't need it,

though."

Because Reuben had probably already taken what

Victor had prescribed, on top of alcohol. "And once

you had the rope around his ankles, he was helpless.

You didn't have to lift him. You tossed the end of the

rope over the gate and hauled him, using the pulley

action for," Sam's words came back to me, "mechanical

advantage."

Wade was quietly working to pull his hands free; I

wanted to keep the conversation going, so he could.

"The only thing that really went wrong was Weasel

biting you while you killed him. So you covered it by

burning yourself on your woodstove. Then ..."

"And then," Mike said dreamily, "I put him in a

fix that made the one he'd put me in look like a fairy

tale. Now I'm going to wipe out all memory of what he

did to me, and show Molly that I can stop it from ever

happening to her," he finished.

"How," Marcus ventured, his baritone voice uncertain,

"are you going to do that?"

"You know," I began brightly, because this was

exactly the part I didn't want Mike getting to anytime

in the immediate future, "now that you've taught us all

a good lesson, this would be a fine opportunity to follow

up on it, by--"

Letting us all go, I was about to say. But he didn't

seem to be listening.

"This building," he uttered in a dead voice,

"should have burned down years ago."

I could see Marcus's hand now: the mark on it.

Once he'd left town, he must have washed off the

makeup. He saw me looking at it, flushed angrily.

"That was it, wasn't it?" I asked him. "What you

tried so hard to protect your dad from: his own actions."

Tommy Daigle's cheerful face rose in front of me,

with the scar on it. "That's the mark of his silver rose

of-Sharon belt buckle," I said, "on the back of your

hand. And Reuben knew it."

He added a note, Mike had said about the blackmail

letter. Reuben always knew how to hurt you.

And if word had got out that one of the Bible

Belters used to belt the other one--suddenly I wondered

how they'd chosen that name; deliberately or unconsciously?

--well, then neither of them would have

had a career in musical soul-saving ever again.

Or so they had feared. So they had paid. "Your

mother was formidable in public. But in private, your

father ..."

"But he'd changed" Marcus insisted, struggling

against his bonds. "He didn't deserve to--"

"Yes, he did," Mike said flatly. "What he got, and

more."

"Wise up," George said scathingly. "Everyone's

going to know we were here. And they'll figure out that

you did it."

"Oh, really?" Mike turned in mock interest to him.

"And how are they going to know that? Especially

since it's Ellie's car parked outside, not mine. Mine's

blocks away, and I was careful to speak to each of you

personally. And I'll be far away," he finished smugly,

"before the fire even starts."

That reminded me: "You called Victor to tell him

Reuben was dead, called Bob Arnold, even called the

garbage truck to take Victor's trash. How? You don't

have ..."

But of course he did. Always prepared: he would

have a car phone, of course. For emergencies. Still, how

had he gotten ...

"The phone numbers to reach Willow and Marcus

were in the Old Timers' book," Ellie said bleakly.

"From the Salmon Festival."

"That's right," Mike said. "As for Victor, I kept

watching him all that night, after Reuben was finished

off. That was the tricky part, what Victor did afterwards.

Working with it all and making sure it fit what I

wanted to have happen. And now ..."

Proudly, he opened his satchel: wax cubes like the

kind on all those canning jars in the cottage's pantry.

Sparklers, from the same bunch of leftovers, I supposed,

as the children had been playing with at the

Salmon Festival.

And finally--seeing this, I began at last to feel

really afraid, because it would work; what Mike had in

mind was going to work beautifully--a large can of

liquid charcoal starter. Opening it, he began squirting

it around with the happy air of a person releasing air

freshener into a musty room.

"You know," said George, "I always knew you

were nutty as a fruitcake. But this really caps it. You

know what, now? I'm glad I never lifted a finger for

you."

Ellie shot an admonishing look at him, but he

wouldn't stop. "He did stuff to all of us, Mike. He was

a bad guy. But you--I think you're worse. 'Cause you

can stop yourself. And Reuben--he couldn't. Reuben

just couldn't."

In answer, Mike squirted charcoal lighter under

George's chair. "Talk all you want. Yakity-yakity. But

better make it snappy. You'd better say all," he emphasized,

"that you have got to say. Because pretty

soon--"

He took one of the sparklers, stuck the wire end

into one of the blocks of wax. "Pretty soon, your little

vocal cords are going to be busy, screaming your lungs

out."

He lit the sparkler. "I set the sparkler here," he

said in a singsong, explain-it-to-children voice, placing

the small wax block in a puddle of the flammable liquid.

"Eventually, it will burn down low enough to tip

over, or a spark will fall."

"Jesus, Mike, what's wrong with you?" Willow

hissed at him, kicking at the sparkler to try to knock it

out of the liquid.

Her foot didn't quite reach it, but the sparkler

teetered, its bright chemical-flare head tipping dangerously

low toward the spreading pool.

I held my breath. The sparkler teetered up again

but now the wax cube was melting, the burnt sparkler

wire sagging dangerously downward. ... Mike

caught it, extinguished it. "Uh-uh. Not yet." Then he

finished placing sparklers into the cubes, set them

around.

"Outside, Molly," he ordered. "Start walking. I'll

catch up to you where we left our car. Get in and wait

for me there."

"But, Dad ..." The child gazed around unhappily,

seeming only now to understand fully what was

about to happen.

"Out" Mike snarled, turning on Molly, whose

eyes widened in fear. But she stood her ground bravely.

"Dad, I don't want you to hurt them. Now let them go,

this is bad."

Mike's voice went frighteningly flat. "You do what

I say or I'll make you wish you had. Understand?"

Molly didn't; not quite. But I did, and the knowledge

made my blood run even colder than the sight of

those sparklers set up in the puddles.

"It's what he said to you, wasn't it?" I put in quietly.

If I could get him, even if only for an instant, to

see the pattern that he was repeating--

--to see precisely how Reuben Tate was surviving,

in whom he lived on--

--but Mike wasn't hearing me. All he could hear

was Reuben's exact words, long ago as he terrorized

Mike.

And all he could do was repeat them.

Molly turned and ran, and I knew from her face

that she wouldn't tell anybody. She was too frightened.

Suddenly it hit me that she must have been there in that

graveyard. She must have seen; that was the point of it

all, really. No wonder she was scared. I heard the door

open, then slam shut.

Wade quietly worked his wrists and ankles, still

trying to loosen the twine. But he wasn't getting anywhere;

George either.

Or me; the thin cord had bitten in enough to make

my hands swell. I couldn't see whether Paddy or Marcus

was even trying.