Blood Wine (8 page)

“And what happened to you?” asked Miranda.

“I waited. I could hear the sounds of a body being dragged.”

“What does that sound like?” asked Morgan.

“It just does,” she responded. “Breathing, voices, scraping, rustling —”

“Could you make out what they were saying?”

“Not much English. It was another language. Not European, nothing distinguishable.”

“And then?” said Miranda.

Elke seemed to retreat inside herself, then flinched. “A shot, there was a gunshot.”

“A pistol? The gun you were carrying?” Morgan asked.

“No, a rifle.”

“Not a shotgun?” He wondered if she knew the difference.

“A rifle,” she said.

“Okay. Then what?”

“A man rubbed his hands all over me.”

“How do you know it was a man?”

“You know! He touched my breasts, ran his hand up my skirt —”

“Did you scream?”

“No, I was frozen. Then he stopped.”

“Did he go inside your clothes?” Miranda asked. Swabs had been taken in the psychiatric ward, but there was no evidence of sexual assault.

“No. It wasn't — it was, there was something cold about the way he touched me, clinical. Like he was doing a gender inventory. He was detached.”

“Did you think you were going to be killed?” Morgan asked.

“No, I did not think I would die. I thought they would hurt me. I wanted to die.”

“But instead, what happened?” said Morgan.

The young woman got up and walked around.

“We'd better call in the Provincial Police,” said Miranda. “And Spivak, he'll need to know what we're up to.”

“What are we up to?” said Morgan.

“Good point,” she said.

“No point,” said Morgan. “No point in bringing in reinforcements just yet.”

Miranda realized, as far as Morgan was concerned, that this was their case.

“Okay,” she said. “We've got a villain copping a dispassionate feel, we've got a chopped-off hand, that was the sound of the axe. We've got a rifle shot. What about the pistol? You said it had been fired recently. Maybe not here.”

“Sounds of a body being manhandled before the gunshot, not after — is that right, Elke?”

“Yes, it echoed but it was like a dull ‘thunk.' I couldn't tell where it was coming from.”

“And did you hear clambering?” Morgan asked.

“What?”

“On metal?”

All three of them looked at the steep steps leading up the side of the largest stainless steel tank, following them to the top with their eyes, where they could see a closed hatch.

Miranda was first to start up. The other two stood back. When she got to the top, she leaned down and tried the hatch.

“It'll open,” she announced.

She hesitated, then swung the hatch up and reeled back from the fumes bursting free. She squatted down to look in, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The tank was half full. She reached around and found a measuring rod, then extended it down until it touched a shadow. As she prodded, the rod broke in half, and the shadow shifted. A dead man's face drifted slowly into the disk of light below her.

She gazed at the corpse turning in the murky darkness, struggling to make sense of her conflicting responses. The stump of a wrist protruding from a shirtsleeve confirmed this was the man with the gold ring. Her assailant, he was dead. But she did not feel vindication or relief, only anger and a vague sense of renewed violation.

“What you got up there?” called Morgan.

There was a large bullet hole in the dead man's forehead. A humane gesture? she wondered. To stop him from drowning? Not through the chest, he would have sunk. Was it to relieve the pain of his amputation? Or was it someone guaranteeing his death? The work of a professional? An expression of contempt? Redundancy born of indifference or hatred?

She stood up and took a deep breath. “I think we'd better call in the appropriate authorities,” she said.

“My phone's in the car,” said Morgan as she rejoined them on the ground.

“Mine too,” she said, “in my purse.”

The three of them walked to the door and as Miranda stepped into the sunlight a rifle shot rang out and the wood in the doorframe exploded into splinters at the level of her heart. Morgan reached past Elke and dragged Miranda off balance, back into the tangled shadows as all three lay sprawled on the floor. There was another shot, then another. Then there was a resounding silence as each listened to their own breathing, to the pounding in their chests, as they tried to assimilate what was happening.

Morgan's Glock semi-automatic was at home in the Annex, secure in a locked drawer of his desk. Miranda's was in police custody at Headquarters. They were not used to firing weapons — they were not used to being fired at. Homicide is about dead people, at least the kind of homicide they usually investigated — which were crimes that might draw public attention, murders among the depraved, the very rich, the irretrievably disadvantaged.

“Now what?” said Elke.

Morgan rose to his feet and peered through a slit by the door. “I'd say, given how the bullets hit the frame, they were coming from the direction of the house.” There was another explosion and he ducked. A new hole appeared within inches of where his head had been.

“Do you think they know you're the police?” said Elke.

“If they do, I'd say we're just part of the clean-up on their way out the door,” said Miranda. “They're closing down business.”

“And if they don't?” asked Morgan.

“Well, same thing, I guess.”

“Either way,” said Morgan, “they'd rather we weren't here.”

“I think they'd rather we were dead,” said Miranda.

“I don'
t know,” said Morgan. “So far, they're just shooting to announce their presence — and to test for return fire. I suppose if they did want to get rid of us, there'd be room to dump us in there with your —” He stopped. He was about to say glibly, “your friend.”

Miranda caught his eye. She smiled and threw him a mock kiss. “Okay,” she said. “How're we going to deal with this situation? You're the action figure role model, the testosterone kid. You lead us, Morgan. We'll follow.”

“Where's job parity when we need it?”

“You two aren't taking this very seriously,” said Elke, sweeping her blond hair away from her face. “You may be used to being shot at, but I'm a civilian.”

“I've never been shot at before in my life,” said Morgan. “Not intentionally. And I've never shot anyone.”

“Great,” said the blond. “So am I in charge, then?”

“We'll handle it,” said Miranda. “We're just thinking how.”

Morgan peered out through the crack, scrunching his face against the wood to get the best view. “They're coming, they definitely want us dead. Three of them. Two are carrying rifles. One's a machine gun of some sort, the other's an assault rifle.”

“Oh my God, my God,” said Elke.

“Praying, Morgan. Not swearing.” Miranda smiled. “You got any ideas?”

“They're stopping at the car, opening the doors. They know it's a cop car. They're looking over here. One's motioning to the others to circle around.”

“The back door, is there a back door?” said Miranda.

“Too late,” said Morgan.

“No,” she said. “Open it.” She reached over and took the blond woman by the arm. “Come on,” she ordered. “Up here.”

Morgan swung the back door ajar, then scrambled up the steel stairs after the two women. Miranda lifted open the hatch in the top of the tank.

“In you go,” she said to Elke.

“No.”

“You go, Miranda, I'll lower you,” said Morgan. Miranda held out her arms to him and he dropped her slowly into the fetid gloom of the tank, letting her go when he could reach no farther. There was a splash and a single cough.

“Okay,” she said as she pushed away the dead man, who had been drawn close by her body's displacement of the murky fluid.

Voices outside were closing in fast. Elke grasped Morgan's arms and let herself be lowered until she dropped into the wine, totally immersed before surfacing beside Miranda. They were both sculling to stay afloat.

Morgan swung over the edge, and hanging from one hand he pulled the hatch cover down before letting himself drop beside them in the darkness.

He was just tall enough that his feet reached the bottom, and as they heard the shed door crash open he took one of the women in each arm and held them still with their heads just above the surface.

Suddenly a machine gun shattered the air. Crashing sounds, deafening. The firing was random, in anger. The men out there thought they had escaped through the back door. The machine gun rattled like chains in a bucket, and light holes appeared all around them. The body of the man with the gold ring thrashed about. They could hear wine gushing, splashing, more holes opening up beneath them in small disks of light.

They huddled with the corpse in the bottom of the tank as the wine level dropped to a brackish pool in the bottom, and then the splashing stopped. There was silence, then they could hear the roaring of an engine. A plane was landing or taking off.

Morgan whispered, “I think they're gone. You two all right?”

There was no answer. He shook Miranda. She looked at him in the mottled light and smiled wanly.

“I think I've been hit.”

“No!”

“How's Elke?”

The blond was staring at them in stunned disbelief. Then she whispered softly, “I didn't know things like this happened.”

“They don't,” said Miranda. “Not usually.”

Morgan checked her over in the stray shafts of light that seemed to be dancing in the fetid air, so that the stainless steel walls flashed eerily, like the inside of a furnace.

“Flesh wound,” he said, looking at the raw tear on her thigh. “You're just grazed, you'll be okay.”

“Oh
,
God,” she said. “What a pain. At least it's antiseptic, you know, the wine …”

“I think we're on fire,” said Elke.

Faint columns of smoke were wafting through the holes in the stainless steel.

“We're on fire!” said Morgan. “They've set the shed on fire. Let's go, let's get out of here before we're roasted alive.”

“Steamed,” said Miranda, correcting him. Inane quips. It was a way of dealing with the adrenalin rush.

“Yeah. Here, I'll have to boost you up. No, your leg — Elke Sturmberg, you get to be hero.”

Miranda tried to help brace Morgan as the other woman shinnied up over his shoulders.

“I see England, I see France,” said Morgan.

“Morgan!” Miranda snapped. “This is serious.”

His head poked out away from Elke's skirt.

“I am serious, damnit.” He shifted his attention to the woman on his shoulders. “Reach. It pushes up, no straight up. Give it a whack. Another.”

“I can't reach, Morgan.”

“Hang on,” said Morgan. “Miranda, steady me.”

Smoke was streaming in through the holes, and rays of bright yellow light danced against the walls and over their saturated clothes and wine-drenched flesh.

Morgan leaned against Miranda and stepped up onto the corpse, which let out a grisly moan.

“I've got it,” Elke yelled as light flooded in from above. “Push!”

Morgan heaved and she swung up and in a flurry of legs clambered over the edge. Immediately she started coughing. She braced herself and draped her upper body down, reaching for Miranda.

Morgan lifted Miranda. When he clasped around her thighs, trying to hoist her up, she screamed involuntarily. He had squeezed her wound. The corpse rolled and they both fell on top of it.

“Please!” the young woman shouted. “Hurry! Miranda!”

On the second attempt, Morgan got a better grip and hefted Miranda high. Elke caught her hand. They hoisted her up and over the edge.

Elke reached down again, farther this time, Miranda holding her from falling. Morgan stretched but fell short of her grasp. She wouldn't be able to take his weight anyway.

“Get the hell out of here,” he shouted. Both women were choking from smoke. Flames raced through the rafters just over their heads. Debris was falling, some of it past them into the tank, where it sizzled and popped. The heat inside the tank was almost unbearable. “Get out,” he shouted again. “Miranda! Go!”

He sank down against the corpse.

“Morgan, grab!”

He looked up. Miranda's slacks were dangling through the smoke.

He stood up, stood on the corpse, balanced, shouted, lunged, grasped the blood- and wine-soaked cotton, snagged his fingers into the fabric until his nails seemed to pull out of his flesh. The two women pulled with everything they had. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his wrist. He could not relinquish his grip on the slacks. Two hands on his wrists, drawing him over the edge.

The three of them tumbled their way down the steel steps and raced out the open back door, Miranda running in spite of the bullet wound on her leg, Morgan choking on smoke. The young blond was laughing hysterically at the unexpected achievement of being alive. They fell together in a huddle on the ground. Morgan and Miranda picked up the laughter and they all were laughing, lying on the ground, with billows of smoke drifting overhead.

Then, in a break in the smoke, they heard a turbulent roar separate from the fire and looked up to see a plane immediately above them. It banked, circled, and came back low, swooping so close they could feel the wind off the prop. Bullets riddled the earth all around them, none finding its lethal mark. Then the plane flew up, and waggling its wings, soared over the escarpment into the setting sun, and they were alone with the dull roar of the fire as the smoke in the stilled light of evening spiralled high into the air.