Death of an Artist (28 page)

Dale looked at the gun, then at Tony's face, back at the gun, and knew he was staring at death. The guy was crazy. He wanted to kill someone. He was looking for an excuse, any excuse. Dale had seen that look twice, and both times someone had died.

*   *   *

V
AN
AND
M
ARGARET
Agee, Petey's mother, finished securing him in his car seat and Margaret leaned in to say, “Petey, you do exactly what Van and Ms. Markov tell you. Behave yourself.”

Petey nodded and turned to Josh. “I have some sparklers!”

“He'll be fine,” Van said. She handed Margaret a small day pack that held Josh's pajamas, toothbrush, and clothes for the next day. He was going to spend the night at Petey's house.

Van got behind the wheel again and started back to Ridge Road, to avoid the slow traffic in town. The boys' voices were high-pitched with excitement as they chattered, and she was again thinking of voices, what they revealed. There was no need to hear any of the words the boys were using, the excitement in the tones was undeniable.

Something about Tony's voice, she thought then. Something not right. She had heard him when he was tired, and when he was hurting, amused, in easy conversation. What she had heard that day was something else.

“Look, there go Colleen and Stu,” Marnie said as another car pulled onto Ridge Road a block or two ahead of them. Colleen and Stu were regulars at the potluck.

Something about his voice, Van thought again. Then she had it. Working in geriatrics, she had heard that tone, a tone of resignation, acceptance that belied any hopeful words the terminal patient used.

Resignation! she thought. Why? What was wrong? Something was. Something was very wrong. The car ahead had reached the highway, had stopped, waiting for a chance to merge into traffic, then it was gone.

She drove the last half block, stopped, and said, “Marnie, would you mind terribly if I don't go? I have a little headache, and I'd really rather not.”

“Oh, dear. We'll just go back home,” Marnie said. Josh and Petey both cried out.

“No, no,” Van said hurriedly. “They'd be too disappointed. Can you manage them both? I'd really rather just go back home and have a quiet evening.”

She undid her seat belt, and Marnie did the same. “I think I can manage them,” Marnie said drily. “Why don't I drive you back to the house?”

“No, I could use the walk and some air. Thanks, Marnie. I'm sorry to be a wet blanket like this.” She and Marnie both got out of the car to change places, and soon Marnie was waiting for an opening in the traffic and Van was walking back up Ridge Road.

*   *   *

D
ALE
'
S
FACE
TURNED
shades paler. He extended his hand slowly and set the sack on the trail. “Take two steps back,” Tony said.

Dale stepped back and did not take his eyes off the gun. He kept his hands up. They were shaking. “Hey, man. I'm not fighting you. Just out for a hike up to the falls, have a bite to eat. You got the wrong guy.”

“Shut up,” Tony said. Looking at Dale, he saw that kid in New York, shaking and terrified, desperate for a way out. He blinked the image away. He should have disabled that kid. He should have let Dale make it to the house, break in, and then shot him with cause. If Dale hadn't drawn his own weapon yet, Tony could have finished preparing the scene. He hadn't wanted to kill him in Marnie's house, in Van's house. His finger was tight on the trigger and he relaxed it a little. There would still be a chance. Dale would do something stupid.

In that strange, remote voice Tony hardly recognized as his own, he said, “I told you there's one chance you'll come out of this alive. Believe that. You're under arrest for the murder of Stefany Markov. You make a break for it and I'll kill you. We're going to town and you'll be put in a cell and wait for the sheriff there. And you're going down in the creek. At the bottom, near the beach, you'll walk out or I'll haul you out.”

The trail had twists and turns, Tony knew. And he knew that if Dale saw a chance to take off running while out of sight even a moment, he would not be able to catch him. His hip was throbbing, he could not run down a steep trail.

“In the water? Man, that's crazy! I'm not getting in that water! There's waterfalls.”

“They aren't high. You can step down them. If you slip and your head goes under, hold your breath. Now get in the creek.”

Although Dale was shaking his head vigorously, his gaze remained fixed on the gun. “I won't run. I swear—”

“You're going down there. In the water or strapped on a stretcher. Move!”

They were at one of the pools of quiet water, no higher than knee-deep. The water was clear, the rocky creek bed visible.

Dale looked at the water, then at the gun pointed unwaveringly at his chest. Gingerly he took a step into the pool.

“Out to the middle,” Tony said. The pool was about twenty feet across here.

Moving cautiously, watching the rocky bottom, Dale took a few steps, hesitated, and moved again when Tony said, “I'll tell you when to head down.”

After he took a few more steps, Tony said, “Now. Start downstream.” He continued down the trail to the canvas sack and picked it up. It was quite heavy.

Muttering obscenities and protests, Oliver took cautious steps in the water toward the rapids a few feet ahead. He'd beat this, he thought grimly. He hadn't done anything and he knew enough to keep his mouth shut until a lawyer showed up. Out to take a hike, shoot off some rounds. It was the Fourth of July, for Christ's sake. No crime there. And this nutcase threatened to kill him. He was the one that should be hauled off to jail.

Evidently the rocks were slippery. Dale began to slip now and again, catch himself, and carefully move ahead once more. He approached the rapids slowly, feeling his way on the rocks. The water was shallower, but it swirled around rocks, some sticking up out of the water, others submerged, covered with foaming water. It was swift, the creek narrower, and beyond the rapids was a shallow waterfall with a drop of no more than two feet.

Dale darted quick glances at the far side, as if weighing his chances. “Try it and I'll kill you before you make it,” Tony said. “Keep moving.” He cursed himself for warning him. He wished he hadn't, had let him clamber toward the other side and then shot. He rejected that instantly. Christ! Not in the back.

Dale came to the end of the rapids, to the drop, and looked over it to the pool below. Carefully he leaned over to hold on to a rock jutting out of the water, and he eased one leg over the edge, groped with his foot for a firm rock. His foot slipped and he cried out hoarsely, a short-lived, strangled cry as he went down with water pouring over his back.

“Jesus Christ!” he cried, regaining his feet, clutching a rock. “This is murder! I'm freezing!”

“Keep moving.” Tony's voice was harsher, strained. Pain radiated from his hip, down his leg, into his back and groin. It occurred to him that he could fall, give Dale an opportunity to rush him, grab the Glock … He gritted his teeth and snapped, “Move!”

*   *   *

N
EVER
BEFORE
HAD
the eight blocks to the house seemed so long. She had walked it countless times after the school bus stopped on 101. She reached the house, where her car was the only one in the driveway. She had expected to see Tony's Acura there. At the door she lifted a juniper branch in the planter, felt under it, and found the house key still in place. She let herself in, was greeted by a joyous Tipper, and walked into the living room with the dog at her side. The door stop was in place at the sliding door.

So much for intuition, for reading more into voices than was there, she told herself in disgust, but just to be thorough, she looked into the other downstairs rooms, then went up to her own room and Josh's. Empty. The house was empty. She walked through the studio, depressingly empty with a paint-stained floor and the long workbench, stained and bare.

Might as well do the rest, check out the front house, she told herself, and unlocked the door to the passage, stepped outside to look around.

Then she stopped. A forest fire up the road? Something glinted in the lowering sunlight. Not a fire, she realized, leaning forward against the rail, squinting. Sun on metal. Sun on chrome! Tony's car was up there, parked up there! She spun around and ran back inside the house, to her room, where she pulled on an old denim jacket that had deep pockets. She got her .22 from the drawer, put it in a pocket, and ran downstairs, through the house, out the sliding back door and to the path down to the trail by the creek.

*   *   *

D
ALE
HAD
FALLEN
again, not flat out, but to his knees, and he was soaked front and back, and shaking hard. They had gone far past where Tony had joined Van and Josh. The trail had become much steeper.

“Please,” Dale begged, sobbing, his voice shaking with cold, “for God's sake, stop this! I'm freezing. My feet are numb. I can't even feel them. I swear I won't run. I can't run. For God's sake have a little mercy!”

“Keep moving,” Tony said. “Not much farther now. How much mercy did you have for Stef? Move!”

It really was not much farther, Tony knew, and was grateful for that. The sound of fireworks was louder, there were more rifle shots, and an occasional sky display that was still too pale. A faint sound of music was background for the other sounds.

Tony watched Dale struggling in the icy water, and he felt nothing but the same hatred for him that he had felt before. He had not shot that boy in New York because he had not wanted to hurt him. He had gotten him killed instead. And he had not shot and killed Dale Oliver, which he had come to do, because he had found that he was incapable of an unprovoked killing, murder. He didn't know the moment, when it came and went, that he might have shot him, but that moment had passed. Instead, he had done something stupid that would let Dale get away with murdering Stef. He was not even sure he could make it all the way down to the beach, to where he could call Will to come get Dale.

They were both moving more slowly. Tony had not realized that going downhill would be almost as bad as going up, but his hip felt afire, throbbing, with jabs of sharp pain radiating out to his groin, his back, down his leg. Every step was painful, forced. He was keeping close to the edge of the trail near the woods. Whenever he found something to hold on to, a tree, a bush, anything, he grasped it to steady himself, and even to lean against it for a second or two, then he forced another step. He was willing himself not to stumble and fall, to keep a grip on the Glock, to keep watching as Dale drew near the end of another pool, approached more rapids.

Dale moved sluggishly, sobbing, with his head lowered, trying to see into the swirling, hissing water. Tony was a dozen feet behind him on the trail. Then Dale stopped his forward motion, began jerking at his leg spasmodically. He reached down with both hands and pulled at his leg, reached into the water as if trying to feel his foot, or the rocks. He began to thrash about, jerking, pulling. Tony drew closer.

“Don't shoot!” Oliver screamed. “For God's sake, don't shoot! My foot's stuck! I can't move!” The words were hardly out of his mouth when his other foot slipped. He lost his balance and pitched forward and was unable to stop himself. His head hit a jutting rock hard, and for a moment it stopped as if in rest, then it slid sideways, down between rocks where water swirled and foamed before flashing forward over the edge of the waterfall. He didn't move. One arm, flung out before him, slid off a rock, over the edge of the waterfall, where the water lifted and released it again and again, making it look as if he were waving to whatever lived in the creek. Water swirled about his submerged head, the foam turned red, then pink, flowed onward.

Tony took a step toward the creek, another, stopped. He stood without moving for several minutes, and he watched Dale Oliver die. Finally he holstered his gun and stepped back into the middle of the trail again.

He looked inside the sack he still carried. A sweatshirt was wrapped around something. He shook the sweatshirt enough to uncover what was wrapped, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. He put the sack down, looked at the trail back to the house, and started up.

*   *   *

V
AN
TROTTED
DOWN
the path to the juncture with the trail where she paused briefly, listening. Cautiously she stepped out onto the trail. No one was in sight. No longer running, but moving fast, keeping her hand on the .22 in her pocket, she started down the trail, and at the first real turn where the continuation of the trail was not visible, she again paused, listening. She edged around the turn, then hurried to the next one. There he was. Tony was hunched over, holding a sapling at the side of the trail, not moving. Agonizingly slowly, he finally began to move his leg forward, without lifting his head.

She ran the rest of the way. At his side she took his arm and put it around her shoulders and held his hand firmly. She put her other arm around his waist and braced herself.

“Lean on me, Tony. Let go a little, lean on me.”

He finally looked up. His face was almost gray, his lips almost colorless.

She nodded. “Lean on me. I can help.”

His weight shifted, and she braced herself anew. “Good. Take a deep breath.” When he did, she said, “Another, and we'll start.”

Haltingly, with many stops for him to take deep breaths, for her to brace herself again, they made their way up the trail, to the path, and finally to the house.

Inside, she eased him to the couch. They were both sweating heavily. He was groping in his pocket, and she moved his hand aside and felt in the pocket. She pulled out a small pillbox, opened it, and recognized the two tablets inside as codeine.