Dead Man Falls (38 page)

Pollock stood with his hand propped on the back of the settee, staring down at the men, looking a little green around the gills himself. He turned toward me and whispered. "It’s not good, Jolene. Not good at all."

"My, dear," Nadine said, grabbing my attention. "So good to see you again. You have just been so helpful to come over here like this." She clasped her hands in front of her chest and sighed. "It does sadden me, however, to see that you’ve not outgrown your foolishness."

"And which one would that be? I have several lists to choose from."

The comeback surprised me. The fact that I could speak surprised me. But seeing Jerry barely breathing had pushed me over the edge from panic into anger, and it was a much better place to be. Anger knew how to handle these situations, and seeing Jerry like that had made me really, really angry.

Nadine smiled. "Willard complained often of your insolent attitude, but I suspected he actually admired you for it. He was always one for a challenge." She turned and smiled at Pollock. "Interesting, isn't it, that
she
was the one that precipitated your undoing, rather than the ones you slept with?"

While these little tidbits about who and what were interesting, they weren't nearly as interesting as the two syringes on the tea tray next to the pitcher. Had she injected the men with something? I looked over at the settee again and tried to make a logical unemotional evaluation. Not easy, but I forced myself to make as clinical an observation as possible.

I noticed a red spot behind Rick’s ear, blood matting his blond hair over a golf-ball-sized knot. Jerry was too far away for me to tell if he had anything similar, but odds were that he did. Whether it was the blow, the drug or a combination of the two that had incapacitated them, the two men were not in good shape. Their respiration rates had slowed to almost nothing, and if there was any more kick left in the drug they wouldn’t be breathing at all very soon. How much time did they have?

I ventured a glance back at Nathan to gauge what he might be planning next, how he fit in to this surreal drama, and what chance I had of doing anything about it. I was a little surprised to see a perplexed look on his face.

"Mother," Nathan said from behind me. "I think you must have forgotten to take your medication today. I’ll go get it for you."

Nadine’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. "You’re not going anywhere. I will take my medication when I see fit, Nathan, and not a minute before. Now, sit down, both of you. I’ll hear no more about medicines and doctors."

"Sit in that chair," Nathan said quietly, prodding me in the general direction of a velvet Queen Anne a few feet from the couch. He followed and stood behind me after I was seated. "Don’t move and don’t say anything."

Nadine fiddled with the tea set. "Willard, darling, it’s been so very long. And don’t you look handsome as always." She patted the space beside her. "Come over here and sit with me."

Pollock clearly did not like that prospect at all. "Nadine, honey," he said, still leaning on the sofa next to Rick. "How come you never told me about the boy?"

A short hysterical laugh burst from her lips. "Well, Willard, to put it rather crudely, I didn’t want the poor dear to turn out like you. He had enough hardships to deal with as it was."

Being the highly perceptive type, I sensed Nathan tensing behind me. I got the feeling he didn’t much like the way the parental issues were playing out. It was a gamble--and not even a calculated one, as I didn’t know how many buttons you could push before crazy turned into murdering crazy--but we needed to get off the fence and do something. Jerry and Rick needed help, and they needed it now. The biology issue seemed the quickest way to Nathan’s psyche.

"You’ve really done a number on this kid, Mrs. Pollock," I said deliberately. "If it were me in this boat, I’d want to know to know the truth no matter how bad it might be. Obviously, he's figured out that Willard is his father, but he deserves to know the rest."

Pollock nodded his head and took a ragged breath. "She’s right, Nadine. It’s not right how you’ve lied to the boy all these years."

"Shut up," she hissed. "Both of you."

I pushed on anyway. "Now about his birth mother--"

"Stop it!" Nathan yelled, sounding like he was ready to crack. He stepped out from behind the chair, pistol drawn. He pointed at me, then at Pollock. "I don’t want to hear this," he said, his voice quivering. "No more. From either of you."

"Nathan!" his mother said, jumping to her feet. "You put that gun away right now and settle yourself down. These people are simply lying to you. Nothing has changed and there is no reason for you to worry. I’ll take care of everything, just like I always do."

"You can’t take care of it anymore, Nadine," I said, digging my feet into the carpet to keep my legs from shaking. "Too many people know. You can’t kill the entire police department. They have the adoption records. They know."

"No!" Nadine stood there, wringing her hands, looking at me, looking at Pollock, then at her son. "No one knows. I’ve made sure of it. There’s no one left outside this room who knows the truth."

Technically, I feared she was right--at least in the short term. The police would figure it out eventually, but that wouldn’t do us much good if we were all dead.

The only weak link in the situation seemed to be Nathan. I didn’t know if he was involved in the murders or not--and in spite of him holding a gun on us, I was leaning toward not--but either way, I had a feeling he was the swing vote.

"Hell of a family situation you’ve got here, Nathan," I said. "And I’m really sorry about the whole thing. But you say the word and I’ll tell you what she never would."

"No!" Nadine screeched.

He swung back to Nadine. "Sit down, Mother. I want to know."

I kept my gaze on both Nathan and Nadine. Nathan had the gun, but Nadine was the one who worried me. "The girl was eighteen when you were born," I ventured. "Maybe you've heard of her--"

"No!" Nadine shrieked again and took a step toward me. "Mother! Sit down."

"I can’t do that, Nathan," she said, her voice hard and even. "I can’t let these people fill your head with lies. I have spent my whole life protecting you from this, and I will not stop now." Her face solidified into an emotionless concrete mask. "Now, go on to your room, Nathan. This is none of your concern." He didn't move. "Go!"

Nathan stood there, visibly shaking. He’d been ordered to his room and it apparently was taking everything he had not to obey.

It occurred to me that Pollock hadn’t said much lately, so I glanced in his direction. He was still in the place he’d been when I came into the room, but he was not looking good. A sheen of sweat covered his pale face and his mouth hung open slightly. His left arm was locked against the couch to keep him upright and his right fist was pressed against the center of his chest.

My first guess was that he was having a heart attack. My second guess was that he was having a fatal heart attack. Even if I got myself killed, I had to do something right now or none of us had a chance.

"Nathan," I said quietly. "Did you kill Calvin Holt?"

He shook his head, but kept staring at his mother.

"Did you kill anyone?"

He shook his head again, the hand holding the gun dropping limply to his side. "I had no idea…"

"Nathan," Nadine said, edging slowly around the coffee table. "Don’t you say one word to these people. They will take what you say and twist it into lies."

"Stop!" His voice boomed across the room. "Don’t you talk to me about lies!"

I slid my right hand under my shirt and propped my hand over the butt of the pistol, watching Nadine, watching Nathan. What was I going to do, shoot her? Stand up and say, "Nobody move?"

The room was a narrow rectangle with me at the end, Nathan to my left, then farther left, Pollock and the couch with Rick and Jerry, in that order. Nadine straight ahead and to the right.

Pollock was starting to wobble, and I figured he wouldn’t be on his feet much longer.

Nadine now held a baseball bat that she had grabbed from somewhere and was heading toward me, a very unpleasant gleam in her eye.

A baseball bat?

I wrapped my fingers around the pistol grip, jumped up and jerked the gun out of the holster.

Nadine shrieked.

I fired once in her general direction then dove forward into Nathan’s side. As I rammed into him, his gun went off and everything went into slow motion reality.

We fell, me on top.

Nathan rolled around beneath me, trying to get to his feet. He wasn’t screaming like he’d been shot either--and neither was I--but that wasn’t a clear indicator of anything.

Then, Pollock crumpled to the floor beside the sofa. Had the stray bullet hit him?

Where was Nadine and the baseball bat?

My pistol still in hand, I tried to untangle myself from Nathan, who was groping around on the carpet, searching frantically for his own gun.

A shadow flickered across the carpet and I looked up in time to see Nadine pull a large black pistol from her skirt pocket and point it at my head. 9 mm was a safe bet.

I shoved away from Nathan, rolled onto my back and fired up at her, five quick rounds at her chest.

She jerked a little, but kept moving forward toward me. Another shot rang out from somewhere to my left.

Nadine stopped and her eyes locked onto Pollock. "Willard?"

The gun fell from her hands, thumping into the carpet only inches from my head.

She tipped her chin down and stared at the holes in her dress and the stain spreading across her chest. She touched both fingers to the dampness then looked at Pollock. "Why, Willard," she said in quiet awe. "I do believe this the worst thing you’ve ever done to me."

"Mother!" Nathan screamed, lunging toward her as she slid to the floor.

I grabbed the 9 mm then scrambled over to Pollock, who’d slumped back down as well. "Take it," he said, shoving Nathan’s pistol toward me. "Get us out of here."

I holstered my own gun, put Nadine’s on safety and shoved it in the front of my pants. I kept Nathan’s gun in my hand as I crawled to where he knelt, hugging his mother to him.

"Call an ambulance," he choked out, fighting back sobs. "Please."

I stumbled to my feet and ran to the kitchen in search of a phone. It took me a few seconds of unseeing panic before I made myself stop and breathe. I scanned the kitchen again. A phone hung on the wall over a built-in desk at the back of the room. I ran over, keeping Nathan’s pistol in my hand as I grabbed the receiver off the hook. I was ready to punch in the nine when I heard steps behind me. I turned.

Nathan stood with a gun held loosely in each hand. Jerry and Rick’s weapons. "You forgot about these."

I thanked my panicked stars that I hadn’t set his gun down when I started to dial. I didn’t move, just held the phone and gun steady and watched him for a twitch of any kind. "I don’t want you to shoot me, Nathan, and I don’t want to have to shoot you. Let me make the call."

"My thoughts exactly." He set the guns on the counter and wiped at his eyes. "Tell them we need four ambulances, but only three need to be in a hurry."

I jabbed at the three magic numbers, thanking God--and whatever monopolistic Baby Bell company inhabited these regions--that 9-1-1 worked in Redwater Falls.

Nathan gave me the street address before he went back to the living room, but the rest of the words were all mine. I don’t remember which ones I used specifically, but odds are good that I uttered an expletive here and there to encourage them to hurry. But with two officers involved I suspected somebody would be here within scant minutes.

I was not wrong. I’d barely had time to make sure Jerry and Rick were still breathing when I heard the sirens. Nathan had covered his mother’s body with a lacy blanket and was trying to turn Pollock to get him more comfortable.

I ran to the door, flung open both sides and raced into the yard to flag them down just in case they missed the two cop cars in the driveway.

Chapter 23

The emergency room at Redwater Falls General looked pretty much as it had when I’d made my frequent treks here as a youth. The most memorable of these always-entertaining visits was when I dislocated my knee during a basketball game. For three hours my kneecap bulged from the side of my leg instead of sitting nicely in the joint on top where it belonged. It took about thirty minutes to get me off the court and into town to the hospital. The additional two and a half hours were spent waiting for the hospital staff to find someone who knew how to relocate a knee joint. No, I’m not kidding. The episode left me with not only a permanently screwed-up leg, but a healthy distrust of medical care in these parts.

But, I had to admit that things had improved in the last twenty-five years. The doctors here had fixed up the bullet hole in my arm pretty well and I only suffered occasional twitches--aftershocks, prophetic warnings or physical déjà vu moments, take your pick.

It seemed that Jerry and Rick were getting good care now too. The doctor who'd come out to talk with me said it was fortunate that Nathan had steered the officers to the bottles--yes, plural--of morphine his mother had stashed. Nathan hadn’t known it was morphine, or why she kept it, but he knew she sometimes gave herself injections. I figured the coroner would find an explanation for it, and I also figured it wasn’t going to be something anyone wanted to know about--especially Nathan.

As best I could tell, Nathan hadn’t been involved in the murders, and in truth, he’d helped save Jerry and Rick’s lives by knowing about the morphine. That had speeded up the process considerably, and both Jerry and Rick had been given Narcan to counteract it. They weren’t going to feel real good, but they would live.

Determining how much damage the baseball bat had done to their skulls was going to be a little more involved, so I still had a while to wait to see if Jerry would be kept overnight or released.