Past Malice (28 page)

I looked down at her and was really worried now. Bucky was stumbling as often as she took a step. We were almost to the parking lot when she collapsed.

I tried to pick her up. “Jesus, Bucky! What’s wrong? Get up, can you? Can you get up for me, and I’ll get you into the car?”

Despite my pleading, she just sat there on the gravel, drooling a little, and the little hairs on my arms and neck stood right up. I looked at her face and her eyes were funny, the pupils too small for the minimal amount of light outside. My stomach contracted; she was badly ill. As soon as I
could get her to the car, we were going to hightail it for the emergency room.

“It’s not…I can’t…Emma, what’s wrong…?”

“I don’t know, Bucky—”

She slumped forward.

“Oh, God! Bucky…Carrie? Wake up, hon, okay? You’ve got to wake up for me. You’ve got to do that now!” I shook her hard and got a moan out of her. I shook her harder and saw her eyelids flutter.

“Don’t do this! Wake up!” I screamed. “Wake up, Bucky! I’m going to get help, just wake up!”

She moaned and I felt her hand tighten on my arm. “The drink.”

“What?”

“Something…” Her head rolled and I couldn’t hear what she said. I thought I would shake her head off, before she opened her eyes again.

“What did you say?”

“Bitter.” She fell over and I couldn’t wake her up. I rolled her over onto her side, just in case she should get sick, and realized that I needed help; I couldn’t carry her to the car myself….

The phone! I grabbed my bag and found the cell phone. We were just close enough to one of the lights in the parking lot that I could actually read the buttons. I punched the on key and waited for what seemed like an eternity before the screen registered. I almost screamed when I read the screen.

No signal.

I flung the thing away from me and ran back to the crowd to find Brian. I found Officer Lovell instead, thanking providence for that. I had to shout to make myself heard, but he got the idea that something was wrong immediately, and followed me as I all but dragged him toward the parking lot. He
used his radio in a second, then started to go through the CPR protocol.

“What happened to her?” he asked as he worked.

“I don’t know! She said it was the drink.”

“What did she have?”

“Two or three glasses of the punch! That shouldn’t be enough to do this! Look, I don’t know if this is important, but she’s got asthma.”

“Okay. What’s her name?”

“It’s Bucky!”

“Bucky! Who gave you the drink, do you know?”

She didn’t answer this time. Not even to cough.

Lovell kept going through the motions. “Okay, an ambulance is on the way.”

I was feeling sick with dread. “I’m going to get my husband.”

He was sweating as he worked. “Make it quick.”

I ran back, but couldn’t find Brian in the crowd. It was one of the most terrible experiences in my life. Try and remember when you were a kid and got separated from your mother in a crowd, then multiply that panic times a thousand, and you’ll get the idea. I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate. I couldn’t see very well in the dark, the crowd’s faces only occasionally lit up by the glare of the fireworks. I couldn’t even hear myself calling for Brian over the noise; some joker had brought a sound system with the “1812 Overture” and was blasting it away. Faces glowed red and green and blue and none of them were Brian’s.

I found Fee and Daniel and shouted to them. “Have you seen Brian?”

“Who?”

“My husband! Have you seen him? My sister’s really sick and I—”

They exchanged a worried glance. “Perry just left too,”
Fee yelled over the noise of the happy crowd. “Said she didn’t feel well. I hope it wasn’t the smoked salmon—”

“No, she said it was her arm,” Daniel shouted. “Going home to take a painkiller—”

A painkiller? Oh sweet Jesus! I stared at them in horror and grabbed Daniel’s arm. “Tell Brian she’s in the parking lot! Tell Officer Lovell, I think Perry put painkillers in Bucky’s drink. She’s gone to—”

Another volley of mortar fire exploded around us. Daniel nodded, but I wasn’t certain he’d heard all of what I said. Fee just looked confused, but I couldn’t waste any more time. I began to shove my way through the crowd, going as fast as I could get bodies out of my way, until I reached the edge. I stumbled, but regained my footing on the fly, pounding as far as I could toward the tree line, the sound of simulated cannon blasts and clanging church bells filling my ears.

I was practically running blind; it was only the last bursts of the finale that gave me enough light to find my way through the woods, once I got past the familiar track to the second set of excavation units. I could feel the branches cracking beneath my feet, could feel brambles and undergrowth tearing at my clothes, but I kept charging right through. I only paused when I could see the ambient light of the town a little more clearly: I was coming to the edge of the wooded area.

I slowed down to a quiet creep now; I could see a light bobbing ahead of me, moving deliberately toward the Mather House. With any luck, whoever it was—and by now I assumed it was Perry looking for the last of Aden’s files—hadn’t heard me over the noise of the fireworks display. I could just barely make out a female form by the door to the house; the flashlight was now on the ground by the door, and I could hear the clink of keys as she tried them in the lock.

I tried to think of what to do—should I call out to her?
Should I go back and tell Lovell? There was no time. I crept closer and closer and realized that this was not a time for finesse or patience or calculation; like Brian had said, sometimes the trick was knowing when to use brute force.

There was also no time to worry about whether she had a gun.

I ran the last couple of yards, and as she turned, I lowered my shoulder and slammed her into the door. That was a mistake, because I didn’t hit her quite right, and I felt something in my shoulder pop. I also felt the door buckle underneath us, and for a split second worried that it would collapse, but it held.

Perry was quick; she stomped her heel into my foot and drove her elbow into my ribs, throwing me off balance. I was too close to her and didn’t fall back. My foot hurt like blazes though, and it only made me madder. I grabbed her left arm, the one with the cast, and shoved it as hard as I could against the door. Perry screamed and brought her right hand, bristling with a fistful of keys, around. She missed my shoulder, but I could feel something sharp tear across under my chin.

This time I did step back. She dropped the keys and reached into her bag. I didn’t wait to see what she would pull out. I grabbed her shirt at the shoulders with both hands and pulled as hard as I could, setting my foot against hers to act as a fulcrum. There was a ripping noise. Perry fell forward. She sprawled out onto the leaf-strewn walkway, the beam from the flashlight spilled on the ground, glancing off her disheveled shirt and hair. Her hands were still underneath her, however, and I couldn’t see her bag. I could, however, smell lighter fluid.

She rolled over even as I darted toward her. I snatched the bag away from her and she struggled. I sat down on her chest, my knees pinning her shoulders. She struggled still
and threw me off her as my hands closed around the grip of a pistol. I pulled it free from the bag as Perry rolled away. I got to my knees, and Perry scrambled to hers, just as I checked that the safety was off and aimed it at her. I stood up slowly, unable to control my trembling.

“What did you give her?” I shouted. “What did you put in my sister’s drinks?”

“I thought you’d get at least one of them,” she said in between heavy breaths. “But if she got one, and that slowed you down….”

The drinks were meant for me?

Perry seized on my hesitation. “Do you really want to be here with me, when your sister’s back there…?”

“Tell me what was in the drinks!” The gun felt so heavy in my hand. It was larger than the one that Meg had showed me how to use, but the principles were essentially the same. I could see Perry watching my shaking hand, the barrel of the gun jerking but still pointed at her. “You tell me now, or I pull the trigger.”

She hesitated.

“Tell me!” There was no mistaking the hysteria in my voice or the conviction either. Perry’s eyes never left the gun.

“It’s in the bag.”

Not taking my eyes off her, not dropping the pistol, I groped with my left hand for the flashlight and set it upright, then rummaged through her purse. I found the can of lighter fluid, and put it aside. I rummaged around until I could ascertain that there wasn’t another weapon in the bag. My fingers curled around a plastic pharmacy bottle and I pulled it out. I risked a quick look: 60 mg codeine and 300 mg acetaminophen. There were the little warning stickers plastered all over the label; the one with the stylized martini glass caught my eye and almost made my knees buckle.

“Is this it?”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Good,” I said, thinking hard. “Now take off your shoes.”

Perry had the audacity to be shocked by my demand. “What?”

“Do it
now
!”

I picked one up and threw it as hard as I could into the tangle of briars and trees to the right of me, then did the same with the other, only aiming in the opposite direction. I stuffed the pills and the can of lighter fluid into the purse and gave a last look at Perry. I wanted to slap her, I wanted to choke her, I wanted to hurt her, badly, but I had to keep my head. Bucky needed me now.

“You had better start praying my sister doesn’t die.”

I picked up the bag, backed away a few steps, and began to run back toward the Chandler House.

I
COULDN
’
T EVEN CATCH ENOUGH BREATH TO SPEAK
when I got back. The ambulance had arrived, Brian was waiting there, and so was Detective Bader in addition to two more police cars. I thrust the brown plastic bottle into the hands of one of the EMTs. “She…will she be…?”

“We’re going to the hospital right now. Do you want to come with us?”

“Yes! No—Perry! I can’t!” I turned to Brian. “You go…I have to—please!”

He took one look at me and got in the ambulance without a word. I saw him take Bucky’s hand as the door shut and the ambulance took off.

I leaned over, hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath. Perry’s bag slid down my arm and landed heavily on the gravel; I was glad I’d put the safety on the gun before I stuffed it back into the bag midflight. I didn’t want to arrive amid a collection of cops brandishing a large pistol.

Detective Bader came over to me. “What happened?”

“Perry’s by the Mather House. That’s where…Aden’s files are, I think. She was going to go through them, destroy them, maybe.”

“Is she still there? Is she armed?” Bader gestured to other uniformed officers.

“She won’t have gotten far. I took…her shoes.” I took another deep breath. “I took one gun from her. I don’t know whether she’s got another. I don’t think so.”

“Where’s the weapon you took?”

I nodded at the bag by my feet. “In there. Uh…my fingerprints will be on it.”

Bader looked grim. “I…didn’t hear a shot.”

“I didn’t need to fire it.”

He didn’t say anything about my choice of words, just gave instructions to the other officers, and they headed into the woods. I started to feel where I was hurting, but all I cared about was whether the ambulance would be fast enough.

“You’re bleeding,” Bader said. “You should get that looked at.”

“Yeah, I will,” I said. I wiped at my chin and could feel the warm trickle of blood smear the back of my hand. It looked almost black in the dim light of the parking lot.

“If she’d caught you a little lower,” he said, “It could have been a lot more serious. You’ll need to get a tetanus shot. Maybe stitches.”

“It hurts like hell, but I don’t think I’ll need stitches. And I get tetanus boosters every five years; for archaeologists it’s just like getting an oil change.” I listened hard but could no longer hear the ambulance’s siren.

He grunted. “What happened back there?”

I told him about my idea that Aden wasn’t led into the
woods, but was going somewhere deliberately, and then talking to Fee.

“Everyone I was worried about was right there,” I continued. “And then when Bucky got ill, and I heard that Perry had taken off, I realized that she might be heading for the Mather House, to see if Aden’s files were there. She had his keys, she was trying to get in when I found her.”

“Found her?” Bader had a frown on his face.

My shoulder still ached, and I wondered if I’d done anything permanent to it. Maybe I shouldn’t have dismissed his offer of medical attention quite so abruptly.

“All I cared about was finding out what she’d given Bucky. I thought it might be her painkillers, but I had to be sure—wait! There’s a mortar and pestle in the kitchen display in the back of the house! She crushed them there and then put them into the glasses of punch. I was just glad that Lovell was there when Bucky collapsed. I could barely think straight.”

By this time, Bader’s radio crackled something I couldn’t make out. He responded, then turned to me. “They got her. Picked her up in the basement, no shoes, flashlight, piles of folders around her. Blood on her feet, on the papers. She was trying to tear them up.”

“I think she was planning to burn that batch too, same as in his home office. That’s why I took the lighter fluid away from her.” I fidgeted, wishing he would just hurry up and finish with me.

“Good girl.”

“You know,” I said irritably, “I know you mean that as a compliment, and I appreciate that, but to some people, ‘good girl’ sounds like you’re talking to a dog or a child. It’s patronizing.”

Detective Bader didn’t say anything, just sort of sucked
his teeth. Then I guess he saw that my mind wasn’t really on Perry Taylor or feminism. “Sorry. I’ll keep it in mind. How about I take you to the hospital?”

“Yes, please.” The wave of relief that rushed over me was almost big enough to surf on. “Can we…hurry?”

We got into the car and, as if in apology, I told him about the company that Aden had put in his and Fee’s names. “That’s when I began to realize that it was the Mather House and not the areas I was working on that was the important part. That was just coincidence.”

“Another coincidence was that Perry was never run down by a drunk driver or someone who had a grudge against the Stone Harbor Historical Society.” The blue light on his dash flashed and bathed his face in its weird strobing glow.

“I know,” I said. “I heard.”

He glanced over at me, but didn’t ask how I knew. “Thing was, she had to set up a payment plan with the hospital because she had no insurance.”

I nodded. “So she was the one who was siphoning off the money from the historic site accounts.” I recalled what Mary Ann Spencer had told me about Perry’s degree in business. “Everyone was talking about how little money everyone else had. And the tourists usually pay cash for their tickets and souvenirs.”

“I think that’s what we’ll find out. I wonder if she’ll also confess to the vandalism at the Tapley House; those incidents seem to have dropped off about the time that Justin Fisher was killed.”

“He probably caught her coming out of the Chandler House when she shouldn’t have. He just got in her way.” As I said the words, I realized that I had also gotten in her way, and she’d tried to poison Bucky to slow me down when I’d
inadvertently told her where Aden’s files were. “Can’t we go any faster?”

Detective Bader didn’t answer, but we sped up, and soon the hospital was in sight.