Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (25 page)

“I didn’t kill Adrienne.” We were stopped now, in the parking lot of the Point. “Give me the keys.”

He took them and stared at his gun a moment. “Stay in the car until I get to your side.”

I hated myself for obeying, for remaining passive, but I couldn’t see an alternative. There was no way to slide under the wheel, out one bucket seat and into another, then out the opposite door before he got there. There was nothing to do but sit and drum my fingers, contemplate my own mortality. It made me furious, having to submit that way.

When I did get out, he took my hand and slipped the gun in his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking you for a walk. We’re going to hold hands because I can’t keep the gun on you right now.”

He guided me to the path that Jason and his siblings had taken the day of the accident, the path Dunson had taken as well on his bicycle, his baby son strapped on behind.

We walked. It was a beautiful day just like that other one, and plenty of hikers were out. There were people on bicycles as well, and some dogs, safely on leashes. Such a peaceful scene, yet so much capacity for havoc. I felt a physical ache, almost, at seeing the elements laid out like this, so ironically, so vividly. Thinking about it, that fateful moment eighteen years ago, I felt tears well and I had to sniff. Dunson yanked my arm; why, I wasn’t sure. I sneaked a glance at him, and his face was hard.

We walked. The sun was pure luxury on our skin. I had no idea how far he intended to walk, and what he would do— perhaps he would simply blow my head off without announcing his plans. One second I’d be walking under a benign sun, the next I’d be dead. I could worry about that or I could enjoy the walk. In retrospect, it seems preposterous that I didn’t worry with every atom of every cell, but we walked a long time. Perhaps endorphins kicked in. I really can’t explain it, all I can say is that I experienced a very ill-advised sense of well-being, that even under the circumstances I couldn’t close myself off to the pleasures of the day.

My hand stopped feeling sweaty in his, started actually to feel companionable. This was, after all, another human being, and my skin was touching his. Perhaps it was the beginning of the Stockholm Syndrome, I don’t know. I just know that for the first time I was aware of Dunson as a man rather than a monster.

“You can’t kill a person you’ve held hands with,” I blurted.

“Shut up.”

“You’re not a killer, I know that.”

“Crazy bitch,” he yelled, but not at me. Looking where his eyes were trained, I saw that a young girl had just loosed her dog, a terrier that looked as if it had ten or twelve hell-bent-for-leather miles in it before it would even start to flag. In half a second the dog was a blur.

The girl stood transfixed, staring at Dunson.

“You crazy, crazy,
crazy
bitch. You can’t let that dog run loose. Don’t you know what can happen on a trail like this?”

The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Her skin looked as if she’d grown up on the Shetland Islands, perhaps, someplace with heavy fog. Her hair was blond and short. She was slender, almost wispy. I half expected her to flee in alarm, but she only shrugged. “So arrest me.”

For a moment I thought he would, knew he considered it. I almost encouraged him but remembered in time that he was crazy. The distraction might save my life, but it could endanger hers. He would probably train the gun on her, and might very well shoot. Go! I wanted to shout. Go catch your dog— anything. But get out of here fast.

I didn’t, though, didn’t dare cause a scene.

The dog came galloping back, it’s energy not even slightly spent, a force of nature set free, more gale-force wind than animal. There were bicycles on the path, as there had been that other time, but the dog made it safely back to its owner, stopped to be petted, and took off again.

I had an idea. It was a crazy idea, and dangerous, but I was damned if I was going to walk quietly to my own execution. I looked around for what I needed, and saw it, a few steps ahead. If only the dog would return …

“Bijou! Here, Bijou.” The girl was calling her pet, who surely must have been a puppy. It turned around more or less in mid-gallop, and came tearing back toward us. Dunson was nearly apoplectic, too intent on the dog to pay much attention to me.

“Get that goddamn dog on a leash, or I swear I’ll make a citizen’s arrest!”

I swooped down and picked up the stick I’d spotted. “Bijou!” Hearing its name, the dog inclined its head toward me. I threw the stick, and luck was with me— a bicycle was heading down the path, on a collision course with Bijou.

Dunson apparently forgot me completely, forgot the whole purpose of the mission, went crazy in an entirely different way. He let go of my hand and took off after the dog, the girl and me chasing him. I tried to stop her. “Call the police! He’s got a gun. Get out of here— please!” She kept coming. But other hikers started to scatter, and the oncoming cyclist began to wobble on her bike. Bijou, completely oblivious, kept galloping, and at that moment, another cyclist came into view, coasting down a small incline, wind in his face, having a fabulous time and suffering absolutely no notion of the pandemonium in his path. The stick landed right in front of him.

Bijou and Dunson arrived at nearly the same time, with me a millisecond behind. Though I’d never played football in my life, I launched my body at Dunson in what I imagined was a flying tackle; I caught him around the pelvis and we leaned forward … leaned, leaned, and finally fell. Bijou jumped out of the way, escaping so narrowly that I saw her brown paw come down inches from my face. The cyclist flying down the hill ran over us.

Or at least he would have if he’d been on a motorcycle, but the bicycle overturned as soon as it hit Dunson’s shoulder, and fell on top of us, the rider barely managing not to. Still, it hurt. It hurt me, and I didn’t get the brunt of it. It hurt Dunson more, I hoped, and better yet it pinned him. I groped in his pockets, reaching for the gun.

“Stop that, goddamn it! This woman’s trying to rob me!” But the bicycle held his right arm, and his own body had pinned his left.

I pulled the gun out and jammed it into his lower back as hard as I could, exactly as I’d seen in the movies: “Freeze or I’ll blow your ass off.”

Considering that he was planning to kill himself, it wasn’t much of a threat, but he froze just long enough for me to pick myself up and get to my knees. “Okay, stand back everybody. Somebody call the police.” The cyclist got out of the way. I rose carefully, the gun trained at the middle of Dunson’s back.

He still couldn’t move without a great upheaval of metal and wheels, but he twisted his face around. “Is Adrienne okay?” he said. “Where’s Adrienne?”

“You killed her, you fucker.” Good-bye Stockholm Syndrome; I wasn’t cutting him one inch of slack. “What did you do with Rob Burns?”

“Rob Burns? Who’s Rob Burns?”

“The reporter.”

“Oh, him. He’s at my house.”

I swallowed. “What did you do with him?”

“What do you mean what did I do with him?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he? You killed him.” I shouldn’t have asked. I felt dizzy, watched his face go out of focus.

“No, I didn’t kill him. Why would I kill him? I just tied him up to get him out of the way.”

“You didn’t kill him?” I was aware I was gibbering, also smiling, poor strategy while holding someone at gunpoint.

“Hey, watch it. Watch it! Let me take that, okay?” The spilled cyclist was trying to get macho. I couldn’t really blame him— my gun was shaking a little— but no late-arriving Ken Doll was getting it away from me.

“You want to try to take it?” I said. “Go ahead, make my day.” Since I avoid clichés whenever possible, I forebore to add “punk.”

And so we waited for the cops, Dunson and me, a frozen tableau, as fascinating, judging from the thickening crowds, as the Mona Lisa.

After about a millennium, the police came.

A century or so after that, I persuaded them to go get Rob, and three years later, Chris joined us at the police station. A month after that they released us.

Acting on some good news Chris had brought, we headed for San Francisco General.

Adrienne had a hole in her shoulder, but she was out of surgery and conscious by the time the three of us could get to her.

She was dead-white, still pretty doped up, but she managed to smile. “You’re all alive.”

“You’re the one we were worried about.”

Her face darkened. “Is Dad okay?”

“He’s been arrested, but he’s fine.”

“He shot me. My own dad shot me.”

“He didn’t mean to, Adrienne. Your dad’s pretty out of it.”

“For Christ’s sake, Rebecca,” said Chris. “Stop making excuses for him. He’s her dad, and he tried to kill her— she’s got to live with that.”

Adrienne nodded. “Thank you.” Some of the trouble left her face. I realized that it wasn’t the time to take the side of the man who’d done this to her— and that it must have sounded as if I had.

“I tried to cover for him,” she said.

“We know. You must have figured out he’d killed Jason when you noticed the keys missing.”

“Uh-huh.” She couldn’t seem to say anymore.

“You’re tired, aren’t you? Do you want us to leave?”

“No!” Her voice was much stronger. “Please don’t leave me.”

I felt for her. She was twenty-three, and she’d lost so many people, so much. She’d lost nearly everything. I hoped it wasn’t too late for her, that her life could start again.

She said, “I found out … I don’t want to die.”

“You took the pills rather than turn your dad in?”

She nodded, looking grateful we understood. “And then, when he came to the hospital, I tried to get him to give himself up. And he went nuts. He didn’t know I knew, you see. So he…” She searched for the right word. “He took me.”

“He kidnapped you.”

“I guess so. I guess that’s what it was. He locked me in a room.” Her eyes filled, and she fought for control for a minute; then she turned to Rob. “What were you doing there?”

“I was watching the house. Waiting for you to show up. Then I saw you two doors down.”

“I got loose and went out the back door. I just stayed in backyards till I thought it was safe.”

“Brilliant me.” Rob was speaking to Chris and me. “I hailed her, which alerted the old man.” He smiled ruefully. “Adrienne got away, but I didn’t.”

“I had to get some gas, though, and that slowed me down.

“Dad went through my things when he took me from the hospital. So he knew about Eddie from a journal I had. I found out where Eddie was from Tommy, who’d already talked to you and Chris, Rebecca. I guess Dad followed me to the park, and we all ended up in the Conservatory at the same time.”

“He must have talked to Eddie’s wife. That’s how we got there.”

Adrienne said, “Poor woman. I wish…”

Her strength seemed to fail then. She couldn’t complete the sentence, but I knew what she wished.

She wished she could have found someone to love her who wasn’t already taken.

She wished she hadn’t been so desperate that her only friend in the world was somebody else’s husband.

She wished her mom was alive, and her brother.

She wished her dad hadn’t tried to kill her.

She wished Jason McKendrick hadn’t let his stupid dog off its miserable leash on a gorgeous sunny day eighteen years before.

THE END

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DEATH TURNS A TRICK

THE SOURDOUGH WARS

TOURIST TRAP

DEAD IN THE WATER

OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS

The Skip Langdon Series

NEW ORLEANS MOURNING

THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ

JAZZ FUNERAL

DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK
(formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)

HOUSE OF BLUES

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION
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82 DESIRE

MEAN WOMAN BLUES

The Paul Mcdonald Series

TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE

HUCKLEBERRY FIEND

The Talba Wallis Series

LOUISIANA HOTSHOT

LOUISIANA BIGSHOT

LOUISIANA LAMENT

P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF

As Well As

WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK

NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)

And don’t miss ALWAYS OTHELLO, a Skip Langdon story, as well as the brand new short story, PRIVATE CHICK, which asks the question, “Is this country ready for a drag queen detective?” More info at
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