A Beautiful Place to Die (18 page)

I expressed shock. “One of your summer rent-a-cops? No, thanks! I have a hard enough time looking after
myself, let alone somebody who can't grow hair on his face!”

“Suit yourself, but be careful. I got trouble enough with traffic and drunks. I don't need any more corpses showing up, not even yours.”

“Maybe you won't have to find Billy. Maybe he'll come in just like he said he would.”

The chief scowled. “And maybe I'm the king of Siam.”

I drove to Oak Bluffs and returned Bonzo's equipment to his mother. No, I said, I hadn't recorded anything interesting. That was too bad, she said. Bonzo would be disappointed. As I left her, I noticed that it was clouding up in the west. Red sky at night?

I thought of Zee, then remembered that she'd be on duty in the emergency ward. I also remembered the laugh she'd shared with the young doctor there. I got into the Landcruiser and drove deliberately back to Edgartown, wearing my hat all the way and ignoring the lengthening line of traffic behind me. At the head of every long line of traffic there is a man wearing a hat—Hatman. I was Hatman today, irritating people behind me because I was irritated by my memory of Zee and the doctor.

I drove to Eelpond, dug out my gloves and clam basket, and spent two hours digging steamers as the clouds gathered. It was getting muggy. Back at the Landcruiser I got my five-gallon lidded plastic bucket that I'd found on South Beach almost as good as new, filled it half full of salt water, and dumped the clams in. Snapping the lid on the bucket and jamming everything back into the Landcruiser I tried to imagine how the clams would taste, but imagining instead how good Zee would taste. Delicious, I reckoned.

Thus occupied with thoughts divine, I drove home, parked, and was lifting my bucket of clams out of the Landcruiser just as Billy Martin stepped around the corner of the house, a shotgun at his shoulder.

“Good-bye, asshole,” said Billy, and he pulled the trigger.

Most of the shot went into the plastic bucket, where it mangled already doomed clams. Some of the rest hit various parts of me. Pleased to discover that I could still move, I did so, throwing the gaping bucket at Billy and running around the corner of the house as Billy pumped another round into the firing chamber. Curiously, I even had time to identify the gun—George Martin's pump Remington .20 gauge, beside which I had sat in more than one blind while George and I hunted for ducks and geese.

With a full head of steam, I ran into the woods, thinking that George's Remington held only three shots and that at the most Billy could have only two shots left. Just then, he let the second one go, and the top of me started going faster than my legs and I fell down. But then I was up again and running quite well, I thought, all things considered. Leaves around me fluttered and fell as I heard a third shot far behind me. The sound of shot rattled through the bushes.

I was still alive! Thorns snagged me and branches whipped my face and clutched at me, but I ran on, heart pounding, lungs pumping. I ran into a tree and fell down. I got up and went on. Glancing back, I saw no Billy in sight. But I ran on some more, noticing now that I was
bleeding in many places, the blood oozing through my clothes.

It came to me that the only reason I was still alive was that foolish, murderous Billy, never having liked hunting or fishing with his old man and therefore knowing little of either sport, had loaded his father's shotgun with birdshot instead of buckshot. The bigger the number, the smaller the shot, but Billy apparently had figured the bigger the number the bigger the shot. Thus I was fairly well peppered, but still alive and mobile. Billy was not very good at killing people, but he was getting better. At least he was using a shotgun now. Next time he'd probably get the right slugs in it.

Somewhere ahead was the highway, and not too far away there was a neighboring farmhouse. I needed both the police and the hospital. I came to the highway and stopped suddenly in the trees. What if Billy was cruising along that stretch, knowing that I would probably come out there just as, in fact, I was doing? Something had popped inside of Billy, making him no longer just a killer in secret. Now he'd come out into the open; he'd gone public with his violence.

I stuck my bleeding face out of the trees and surveyed the scene. My own driveway was a quarter of a mile away. As I looked toward it, a red sportscar came out, paused, and turned toward me. Beginning to hurt now and feeling a bit woozy, I lay down in the scrub oak. The car approached, slowed, slowed more, then eased on by, its exhaust murmuring expensively. Leaking blood, I tried to look like fallen leaves. Billy's face looked at me but saw nothing, and the car went on down the road. It occurred to me that Billy must have hidden the car behind the shed while he waited in ambush.

I wondered whose car it was and thought I remembered seeing a little car like that parked on the dock near the
Bluefin.
Tim Mello's car, maybe? My head was fuzzy. I decided to get up and find help, but found getting up harder than I expected. I was probably losing more blood than I could spare and was perhaps going into shock. This thought lifted me to my feet and sent me staggering out into the highway.

What if Billy turned around and came back? Too late now. A car came by and I put up both hands and waved for it to stop. The driver, seeing a wild-eyed and bloody man dressed in torn clothes, accelerated past and fled on down the road. I staggered along the road, tried and failed to stop two more cars, the drivers of which shared the alarm of the first driver who had passed me. Feeling tired, I sat down just as a girl driving a pickup stopped beside me. She was a suntanned girl wearing shorts, sandals, and a blue shirt. She jumped out and knelt beside me.

“Can I move you?”

I considered the question fizzily, then nodded. She put an arm under me and got me up and into the pickup.

“I'm going to bleed all over your car,” I said, feeling apologetic. I saw that I'd already bloodied her clothes.

“Don't worry about it,” she said. She wrapped me in a beach towel and drove off. As we sped up the road, I thought I saw the red sportscar coming back, and I slid down out of sight a bit. The girl glanced at me and stepped on the gas.

I faded away then and only eased back awake as they were wheeling me into the emergency room on a stretcher. I heard a startled voice:

“Jeff!”

Zee. Still on duty and obviously surprised to see me.

“Hi,” I said. “It's me.”

Her lovely face appeared. Beside it was the face of the young doctor. I rolled my head away, looking for the girl who'd brought me in. She was gone. The Good Samaritan. I requested a blessing for her from whatever gods there might be, then rolled my head back and smiled up at Zee. “I have a problem, folks,” I said.

“Don't talk,” said Zee.

“I think it looks worse than it is,” I said. “It's birdshot, I think, and I've got some of it in front and back, both. But I don't think any of it went deep enough to do any serious damage to my gizzard or anything else inside there. I may be a little short of blood, though.”

Zee faded away, then came back. Other faces appeared and disappeared. There was a muted roaring in my ears that came and went with the faces. Time apparently passed.

“I think he's all right,” said a voice I took to be the young doctor's. “These appear to be superficial wounds. We'll be a while picking out the pellets, though.”

I felt the prick of a needle and then was looking at the ceiling. There was a tube in my arm and I was covered with a sheet dotted with red spots. Seepage. I rolled my head and there was Zee, sitting beside me with a worried look in her eyes and the suggestion that tears had been responsible for her slightly smudged mascara.

“We've got a problem,” I said.

“Oh, thank God! You're awake!” She reached out a hand and touched my shoulder.

“Gosh and gee whiz,” I said. “If I'd known that this was all it took to make you concerned about my well-being, I'd have done it sooner.”

“Be careful how you talk,” she said. “You're at my
mercy. I'll whack you on a bullet hole if you don't behave and keep a civil tongue in your head.” She pressed my shoulder, then got up. “Stay right there. I'll get the doctor.”

The doctor was young and serious. He was also the same one I'd seen laughing with Zee. He listened to my heart, checked my pulse and blood pressure, took my temperature, and then nodded. “We've given you some shots and some blood and dug most of the lead out of you, and it looks like you're going to be okay, Mr. Jackson.” He smiled, then was serious again. Too serious a guy for Zee, I decided.

“Are the police here?” I asked.

“They came and left. It seems that tonight something big is happening that's keeping them very busy. They asked me to call them when you were awake. They want to talk to you about this.”

Yes, tonight was drug-bust night. It seemed a distant sort of business. “Where am I right now? Am I still in the emergency ward?”

“No. We've got you in a room down the hall in the hospital. Why?”

“What time is it? How long have I been in here?”

“It's about ten o'clock. They brought you in about six. Why do you ask?”

“Because I don't think it's a good idea for me to be here. The guy who shot me—Billy Martin, just for the record—” Zee's eyes widened, the doctor's didn't. “Anyway, Billy is a little wacky, I think. Maybe he's taking something to give him courage or something, but in any case he tried to kill me right in my own front yard, then he drove up and down the highway in broad daylight looking for me so he could finish me off. Finally he must have figured it out that
I was either lying in the woods or I'd made it to the hospital. He'd have checked the woods while there was still light, and when he didn't find me there, he'd expect to find me here. And being the loony that he is, I wouldn't be surprised if he came right in here after me. He's just crazy enough.”

“I'll call the police,” said the doctor, and he hurried from the room. Zee was at the windows pulling the curtains shut. I tried to sit up. Made it. The needle in my arm pricked me. I took it out.

“Where are my clothes?”

“In the locker. Stay right there.” Zee crossed the room and went toward the door. There was something odd about her voice.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I can see the parking lot from your window. I think I just saw Billy Martin get out of a car.” She pointed at me. “Stay, Fang.”

Then she was gone.

I had my legs over the edge of the bed when she came back. My skin felt on fire. “It's him, all right,” said Zee, coming in as quickly as she'd gone. She went to a locker, dug around, and flung me my bloody clothes. “Stay on the bed. Dress. Be quiet!”

She pushed the bed into the hall. We rounded a corner, then another. At the next to the last room she wheeled me inside. It was a four-bed ward with another occupant asleep in a far bed. Inside, Zee yanked an existing bed out and replaced it with mine, with me still aboard.

“Dress, damn it!” Her voice was a hiss. She swept the curtains around me and I heard her exiting with the bed mine had just replaced. I struggled into my clothes. All of me hurt. I oozed my feet into my shoes and slid off the bed.

Right onto the floor. No zip in the old bod. I sat there awhile, then got myself together and pulled myself up, using the bed as a support. I sat on it, resting, panting. Then Zee was back again.

“Billy's headed for your room. I guess he got the room number from somebody in emergency. When he gets to your room, he won't find you. He'll either drop the whole
thing or hell start looking for you. It'll take him time to get here and maybe by then the police will have arrived.”

“And maybe they won't,” I said.

“That's right, so we're leaving. My car's out back.”

“Fine.” I stood up from the bed, swayed, and felt her arm around me.

“Come on, then. Lean on me. Put your arm over my shoulder.”

I did. We staggered down the hall toward the door, then outside. I glanced back and thought I saw blood where we'd walked. I was apparently leaking a bit and leaving a trail.

“Come on, come on,” said Zee. “Stop walking in circles.”

I tried walking straight. Women are terribly strong. I was remembering seeing them shopping, a baby on a hip, another child dragging on a skirt and mom pushing a carriage weighing three or four tons. Could dad manage all that? Probably not. Thus I admired Zee as she hefted me across the parking lot and into her Jeep. It was dark and windy. Lightning glowed in the west. I noticed that her rod was on the roof rack. Had she really been practicing without me?

“Marry me,” I said. “In forty years or so I'm going to need somebody to carry me around like this all the time. I think you can do the job.”

“Shut up,” said Zee.

I slouched in the seat, feeling woozy. “Where are we going?”

“Away from here.” As we pulled out of the main parking lot, Zee looked to the right and cursed. I followed her gaze and saw a red sportscar easing toward us. “Blast and drat,” said Zee. “That looks like the car Billy was driving.”

At that moment the car passed beneath a streetlight. It did indeed look like the car I'd seen Billy driving after he'd shotgunned me. I slid down in the seat. “I thought he was inside the hospital,” I said.

“He was! I saw him! He must have ducked out again as soon as he found your room empty! If he recognizes my Jeep, he may put two and two together.” At the end of the drive, she turned toward the oncoming headlights. Smart Zee. Billy would be partially blinded by the lights and might not recognize her Jeep.

Billy passed us. I grunted my way back up onto the seat and looked back. Son of a bitch! He was turning around in the hospital driveway.