Killer Move (30 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

W
hen I banged through the cafeteria doors I found myself in a long open space with low Musak and racks of things to eat, a place to pretend you or some friend or relative wasn’t so sick after all and everything was fine and fixable through a latte and a skinny muffin. I hurried straight down the side of the room, scanning the tables. The room was scattered with a cross section of local humanity balanced on little designer chairs. It was hard to pick out anyone in particular.

Finally I saw her, slumped over a table right in the middle. She was in work clothes—the outfit she’d been wearing to go into the office yesterday, of course, before the meeting—but looked like she’d put them on in the dark. Her face was very pale. Her hair was lank. She looked like an old woman, far from home.

I scooted between the tables to her, leaned down, and put my hand gently on her shoulder.

“Honey, let’s go.”

She swung her head up, took a second to recognize me. Close up she looked far too thin.

“Hey,” she said, and smiled. Her voice was weak, despite the warmth in it. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too.”

“I’m sorry about this. Just thought it was a good idea, you know?”

“Yeah, but it’s not. We need to go.”

She blinked at me, then swung her head robotically to the side. I followed her gaze and saw Nick coming from the counter, a cup in each hand. He saw me, too.

“Don’t know whether I can drink a coffee, in fact,” Steph said. “Still feel sick.”

“That’s right, honey. Your stomach’s messed up. Coffee is a bad idea right now. Come on. Let’s leave.”

Nick was quick getting over, but he stayed in character all the way. He looked cowed, as if he knew he was in the wrong but was determined to make things right. He was diffident. He looked exactly as he should.

He started talking from ten feet away. “Hey,” he said. Muted, cautious. Concerned.

“So which is it?” I asked. “Are you just an actor, or are you actually one of them?”

Nick looked at me warily. “What?”

“Don’t bother pretending. I know what’s going on. So which is it? Player or filler? Emily never mentioned you. So I’m guessing you’re one of them.”

“One of who?”

Steph looked more confused than ever. “Bill, what are you talking about? Who’s Emily?”

“Steph, seriously—we’re going. We’re leaving this hospital right now.”

“Leaving the hospital?” Nick said. “You’re not serious? Ste—Your wife is sick, sir.”

“I’m aware of that. And you and I both know how and why it happened, too.”

“I really don’t, sir,” Nick said, with maddening calm. “I brought the wine bottle in, like you asked. I . . . I really think that the hospital is the place for her to be right now.”

“Is that so? I heard you tried to make my wife leave here just a few minutes ago.”

“Uh, no,” he said, looking confused. “I just suggested we should go to the outside seating, so she could get some fresh air.”

“Bullshit.”

“Mr. Moore, I understand you’re going to have a problem with me, in the, uh, light of things, and probably I should go, leave you guys to it now you’re here, but her health is the priority, right?”

“We’re leaving now,” I said, trying to ignore him, gripping Steph’s arm in my hand, fairly gently.

A nearby table had started taking an interest—two middle-aged women and a man—and were making no bones about staring. I knew how it must look. A woman who really did look like the hospital was the only sensible place for her. A neat young man in pressed chinos and a spotless shirt, speaking calmly, talking sense. A wild-eyed older guy, in stained trousers and an old sweatshirt, last night’s alcohol in a rank fog around him—and who was possibly also broadcasting on some psychic level the effects of having just seen two people shot to death near a swimming pool full of blood.

“Honey, please, let’s just go.”

Steph wouldn’t get up. Either she was too weak or confused, or she’d got it fixed in her head that the situation with Nick needed to be resolved, and was brooking no deviation until that was done. She’d always been like that, since college, since childhood, most likely. She wanted things sorted out. Squared away. That’s a good quality in a partner, and I’d always loved it about her. I didn’t right now.

“Bill, I . . . I don’t know.”

The man from the nearby table was staring at me. He was bulky, wearing a cap, big gray mustache. He reminded me forcibly of the guys who’d got in my way when I’d seen the actor playing David Warner on the street opposite Kranks, and I wondered—had
they
been real? They’d certainly been very quick to intervene on behalf of a stranger. Did people do that kind of thing anymore? Had Emily told me everything? Had there been enough time to fill me in on all the levels, or were there lies out there I didn’t even know about? Was the big guy in front of me running backup for Nick? Would there be other people in this room doing the same?

The guy stood. He was tall, paunchy. “The kid’s right,” he said. “This lady doesn’t look good. You shouldn’t be taking her anywhere.”

He put his hand on my arm.

I shook it off. “Get out of my face, asshole.”

Nick looked concerned. He looked insanely reasonable. He looked like the good guy, without a doubt. For a second I even questioned myself—wondered if I’d got this wrong, if I’d somehow got turned 180 degrees from reality and was doing nothing but swimming further and harder in the wrong direction.

“Mr. Moore,” Nick said, taking a step that, probably not accidentally, put his body between me and the main doors. “Why don’t we just—”

“I don’t know who the hell you really are,” I said. “But get out of my way. Now.”

Nick glanced at the other man, making a mute appeal in the face of a tide of unreason. The guy saw his chance to be a hero, to aid this nice young fellow in front of the two women he’d been sitting with.

He put his meaty hand up, gave me a shove in the chest. “Listen, buddy . . .”

I’d gripped the back of a chair before I even had a plan for it, then whipped my hand up and across like a vicious crosscourt half volley.

The chair caught the guy a glancing upward blow before making to where I’d intended—smack into the side of Nick’s head. It was a light chair, but I’d swung it very hard and very fast, and Nick went straight down.

Suddenly there was a lot of noise—people gasping, standing, chairs being knocked back and over, somebody shouting for security, immediately, as if they’d been waiting all their life for the chance.

“Bill, for god’s
sake,
” Stephanie said, aghast, staring at Nick on the floor. “What are you
doing
?”

I was done with trying to talk anyone into anything, done trying to explain myself, done trying to deal with anyone at all except in the most basic terms. I slung my arm around Stephanie’s back and started trying to get her out of her chair. The guy with the baseball cap threw a punch at me. It caught me on the side of the head, but I turned away, head ringing.

“Come at me again and I’ll kill you,” I said, in a voice I barely recognized.

The guy wasn’t to know I was a Realtor, that I was just some asshole, the guy everyone over on Longboat had thought it would be fun to mess with. Bill Moore, everybody’s punch, this season’s recreational bitch. My voice said I meant serious harm, and he was closest to the firing line. He hesitated just long enough for me to get Steph’s feet into stuttery movement.

I half dragged and half carried her toward the exit. People stared. People muttered. My heart was pounding, but I knew there were still cops in the building and we had to get out of here before they started taking an interest—or this whole thing was over.

When we made it to the door I glanced back and saw Nick pulling himself up off the floor, helped by the guy in the baseball cap, who was talking earnestly to him, doubtless telling him to call a lawyer or the army or to just get over there and kick my wacko terrorist ass. Nick was bleeding hard from a long cut across his cheek. He looked shaken, in pain, very disconcerted.

Acting? Could it be?

I pulled Steph out into the corridor and steered her toward the main cross hallway. She kept weakly protesting. “Bill . . .”

“I’ll explain in the car.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“I know. But we have to go, Steph. Please just trust me on this, baby. We have to go.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

I
hustled her out the side door, moving as quickly as possible without looking like we were fleeing the scene. It was near dark outside now, the grounds and parking lot dotted by ornamental lamps. When we got to the car I held Steph upright against it while I fumbled for the keys. I levered her into the seat as gently as I could.

It was only when I’d got my door shut that I realized how sick Steph actually looked. In the harsh white of the courtesy light her skin was slick with a film of greasy-looking perspiration, and she seemed cramped over on herself, arms and legs spiderlike.

Her eyes were alert, however, and in them she looked like my wife. “Where we going?”

“Don’t know yet,” I said. “Let’s find out.”

I jammed the key in the ignition. Then in the mirror I saw Nick running across the parking lot toward us.

“Jesus Christ.”

Steph turned in her seat, saw him coming, too, his arm held out. “What the hell’s he doing?”

“What he was paid to do,” I said. “Either he’s behind on the game or Barclay’s had a rethink—and decided he can do without me to carry the can after all.”

“Barclay? You mean
Sheriff
Barclay?”

“Yep,” I said, jamming the car into reverse.

“Bill—what are you talking about?”

I realized she didn’t know anything that had happened to me today, or even who Hallam was/had been, never mind Emily or Cassandra. “Later, honey.”

The car leaped backward, spraying gravel. I pulled it around too harshly and the back scraped someone else’s car, grinding along it with a sound like an animal in pain. I yanked it up into drive and sent it straight toward the man now standing right in the middle of the lot. For all I knew he had a gun. I wasn’t going to take the chance. I shouted at Steph to get down, reached over and shoved her when she didn’t move.

He stood his ground. The car hit him full-on. He came crashing over the hood and into the windshield before tumbling off on the passenger side.

I stopped the car.

“He’s getting up,” Steph said. She was right. He wasn’t moving quickly, however. I was—and I had every intention of keeping it that way.

I ran around to where the guy was still trying to get to his feet. Gave him a kick in the chest to put him back down. In the last ten minutes I’d had more violent contact with other human beings than at any time since the playground, but now I couldn’t seem to stop.

I stood on his wrist.

“Come after us again, and I’ll kill you. Take the message back to whoever you’re working for, too. Make sure they realize it includes them.”

He shook his head, as if he didn’t have the faintest clue what I was talking about. I ran back to the car and drove away fast. At the junction with the main road I held it long enough to make sure I wasn’t going to get broadsided, then took off into traffic, going right but then taking the quick left/right dogleg to head north.

Steph didn’t say anything. She seemed mesmerized by the brake lights of the cars in front of us—either that or locked into an internal state of trying to process events. I didn’t know how to start explaining. It wasn’t clear in which order information had to be presented to make sense. Did I tell her that the guy she’d thought she’d been flirting with had been an actor—that she’d just had a walk-on part in some play in which people overturned my life for fun? Or did I lead with the news that when I’d left our house there’d been three dead bodies in it—corpses of people she’d never met, one of them the horrific remains of a young woman with whom I’d spent the night drinking?

“I don’t understand,” she said suddenly. “I don’t understand anything that’s happening.”

“We’ll talk about it,” I said. “For now, I just want to get us out of town for the night. Head up the coast a little way, maybe Tampa. Find a hotel, somewhere to stay. I need to work out what the hell we’re going to do.” I remembered that my credit cards were dead, and my ATM cards could be by now, too. “Do you have any money?”

“Don’t know.” She looked vaguely around, then frowned. “Don’t have my purse. It’s at the hospital.”

“Of course,” I said. “Okay, well, never mind.”

This was bad, however. I couldn’t recall how much I had left from the visit to the ATM that morning, but it wouldn’t be much. We had nothing with us, no clothes, no charge cards. We could wind up sleeping in the car, and Steph didn’t look well enough for that. As we sat at the next set of traffic lights—me glancing in the mirror every two seconds, convinced someone would be creeping up behind, hiding in the run of traffic, waiting for the moment to strike—I realized my pocket was vibrating. I ignored it. I couldn’t think of anyone alive who I should talk to, anyone who wasn’t already in the same car as me. It stopped vibrating after a while. But then, thirty seconds later, came the sound of an SMS being delivered.