The Baker's Wife (35 page)

Julie's feverish tossing and rambling had quieted. Her hair was soaked at the temples and her blankets were damp. Her breathing had stopped striving.

“Who's there?” she whispered, keeping her eyes closed.

“You're not alone anymore, Juliet,” Diane whispered.

“Juliet.” A flicker of a smile pulled at the corner of Julie's mouth, then let go. “No one's called me that for a long, long time. Jack stopped”—the muscles of her chin puckered—“the day I told him God didn't make sense to me. I had tried for a long time, for Jack's sake, because I loved him. I was his . . . Juliet. Until that day.”

“I'm so sorry,” Audrey said.

“I'm not sorry for what I did,” Julie said. “He's the man with all the answers. He deserves a crime he can't solve.”

Audrey and Diane exchanged pained glances. Miralee said, “Mom—”

“Miri?” Julie's eyes opened.

“I'm sorry I left. I didn't know.”

“You came looking for me?”

“Mom, Dad's gone . . . crazy. He's hurt some people. He might kill them.”

“You mean like he did his own wife?”

Audrey squeezed Julie's hand. “He's desperate to know you're alive, Julie. He wants you back.”

“Who are you?” Julie squinted and frowned.

“This is Ed's mom,” Miri said. “I wouldn't have come looking for you . . . if she and Diane hadn't convinced me.”

“Diane?”

“Right here.”

“Diane Hall?”

Diane continued stroking Julie's hair. “The one and only.”

“You left me too.” The accusation in Julie's voice shocked Audrey.

After an awkward silence, Diane said, “Thank you for looking after my parents for me. You've been good to them.”

“People who've lost everything understand each other.”

Audrey was aware of the dwindling time. “We're going to get you home,” she said.

“I don't have a home to go to.”

“Don't say that,” Miralee said. “You have to talk sense into Dad, and then you've got to see your doctor.”

“I left the medicine . . . so stupid.” Julie sighed. “Then I injured something, getting boxes up here. It refuses to heal.”

“Mom—”

“I've never been able to talk sense into your father, Miri. It's not going to happen now.”

“He's going to murder my husband and son.”

“Just let him see your face,” said Miri. “You're his sanity.”

“No. I'm not going back.”

Panic flitted through Audrey's lungs. She sat back on her heels where she knelt, feeling ready to drag Juliet off her cot and through the snow by one arm.

“Don't let Jack harm more people than he already has,” Audrey begged.

“I'm not responsible for his behavior.”

“That's true, but you can stop him.”

Diane said, “I hear something,” and got her chunky legs and arms to lift her large body off the floor. She exited the cabin and left the door open. The cool air gave Audrey goose bumps, and Julie cinched the blanket under her elbows, but Audrey decided not to make her more comfortable by closing the door.

“Geoff and Ed don't have to die anymore than you do,” Audrey said. “And I'm not going to let them. You're too sick to fight me.”

“Then I must be too sick to make an appearance at whatever crime scene he's created for himself.”

It was a helicopter Diane had heard. The thumping rotors were like the bursts of relief that Audrey had felt when she'd finally agreed to touch Julie. They empowered her now, with rescue in sight and the hands of the clock not yet vertical.

“There will be a radio on the helicopter,” she said. “You can talk to him, that's all. You won't even have to look at him.”

“No,” Julie said.

“Why not?” Audrey demanded.

“He can't beat me,” Julie said. “I have to win at least one round. I have to get something out of this. Something for myself.”

Audrey felt new fury rising in her. It wasn't right that one person's injury could cost bystanders so much! She leaned over Julie and took the diamond necklace in her fingers, then yanked it toward her and broke the chain. Julie protested but Audrey easily kept the jewelry out of her weak reach.

If Wilson couldn't justify handcuffing Julie and rolling her into Jack's presence on a gurney, Audrey could only hope that Jack might accept this evidence. “If you give in to this pain, Jack wins. You don't want that.”

Julie barely had the strength to roll onto her side and face the wall.

Miralee watched, lips parted and eyes wide. “Mom, we can start over. Everything will work out.”

Her statement was a plea that roused Audrey's protective maternal senses.

“You should have let me die,” Julie said.

“Why?” Audrey said. “So you can beat Jack by behaving as badly as he does? What kind of win is that?”

She questioned in her heart what she might feel about this woman if Geoff and Ed didn't survive the hour. Would she also be reduced to wanting nothing but death for herself and others? Audrey grabbed Miralee's hand to keep herself anchored to another person's life. Julie Mansfield was like a bright star, exploded, dead but still living as a black hole.

She was startled by the desperation of Miralee's grip.

CHAPTER 34

The small hand of the old clock moved through the eleven and started the crawl toward the twelve. Coach passed in and out of consciousness, though Estrella and Geoff had staunched the blood flowing from his torn feet. Geoff held the man's hand and prayed silently. Ed recognized the focused expression that others interpreted as mere thoughtfulness.

In a moment of wakefulness, Coach saw the cat and began to tremble. Leslie apologized and explained why she couldn't put the cat out. “He took a bullet to his paw, see?”

He saw. He frowned. He stopped shaking. And then he started chuckling. Ed watched, amazed, as the ailurophobe gestured for Leslie to bring the cat to him. Now it curled up in the warmth of Coach's armpit, man and beast sleeping off their pain together.

Estrella talked Jack into letting her bring baguettes in for everyone to eat. They dried out untouched in a basket on one of the pantry shelves.

The cordless phone rang once, and Estrella reached for it. Jack snatched it first and hurled it out of the storage room and into the narrow mouth of the brick oven on the other side of the kitchen with startling precision. Ed heard it come to pieces against the inside wall before the residual heat of the morning fire began to melt its parts, crackling and popping like rice cereal.

Everyone but the coach looked toward their lost contact with the outside world, and Ed suspected they were all thinking what he was: now how would they know if Mrs. Mansfield was on her way back?

The detective's loss of composure was all the evidence Ed needed to say that Jack believed his wife was already dead. Ed felt sick. How could his mother find a body that the entire police force couldn't?

Jack was pacing, sweating. He stormed out of the pantry into the kitchen. Ed jumped up and went to the doorway.

It was not the first time Ed had wished he were a defensive tackle rather than a point guard. He knew how to steal a basketball, which was of course larger than a gun and less deadly, but the skill sets were transferable. He had long arms, speed, decisiveness, and in this case, youth on his side. The main problem was that Jack wouldn't be doing any passing or dribbling with that firearm. In principle, though, any ball could be stolen if the ball handler was overconfident and distracted, and Ed thought Jack was, finally, both.

He watched Jack pace between the storeroom and the wood-fired oven. When the detective caught sight of Ed, he motioned with his gun for Ed to stay behind the doorframe, then continued pacing. Ed didn't move. Jack didn't notice.

When the time was right he couldn't hesitate.

His game plan: act alone, use surprise. His dad wouldn't support such a plan, and trying to explain a strategy to Leslie or Estrella would only catch Jack's attention. It was his mistake to make, right? Ed prayed it wouldn't get anyone killed.

Jack was walking directly toward him.

Ed would foul the detective with a body slam, force him to drop the gun, kick it away, and beat Jack to it. He wouldn't kick it too far, because he needed to get control of the pistol before Jack had time to reach the backup revolver on his ankle. Train the gun on Jack, get Dad and the others to take the revolver.

If he had time he'd blow a window out to alert the SWAT units outside.

Ed hesitated about that. He'd shot a gun once or twice in his life, but what if he hit someone on the other side of the glass? And did Cornucopia even have access to SWAT?

No window shooting. He'd get Jack to disarm one of the doors.

Jack reached the pantry, eyes on Ed, and turned around. The timing wasn't right. Ed couldn't move until he was invisible to Jack, until Jack's mind was overtaken by its own thoughts of disappointment and injustice.

The stainless-steel workbench in the middle of the kitchen stood to the height of Jack's wrist, hanging at his side. He held the gun loosely in his right hand and came within a few inches of the table's corner as he passed it. All Ed had to do was lunge and force the back of Jack's hand into that sharp metal point. Jack's fingers around the gun would open even if he willed them to stay closed.

The moment passed. Ed chewed himself out. Jack's pacing could stop at any time.

Ed's core muscles were vibrating by the time Jack turned around in front of the woodstove again. Ed crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe to hide his anxiety.

When the detective looked up, his eyes did pass right through Ed to some spot behind him, which Ed later realized was the spot where Coach lay, faceup on the ground with his broken feet propped up on bloodstained flour sacks, and a wounded cat tucked under his arm. But in that exact second his only thought was the fear that Jack was going to march straight back into the pantry without making another round through the kitchen.

Which is what Jack did. He stepped over Ed's large feet and just out of Ed's reach, pointed his gun toward Geoff's chest, and cocked the hammer of his pistol. Geoff's prayerful eyes stayed closed.

And so Ed reacted without thinking, without deconstructing or reassembling the plan he had waited one beat too long to set in motion. He jumped at Jack's arm, slapped at the gun as if it were an orange ball and the game clock were ticking off the final seconds.

The force of Ed's hit pushed Jack's aim sideways and downward as the gun went off. Jack kept his grip on his weapon. The silencer understated the gun's damage and was upstaged by Ed and Jack falling into one of the freestanding metal shelf units. Jack grabbed hold of the frame with his free hand but Ed, carried forward by his own momentum, found his feet entangled with Jack's, preventing the detective from recovering his center of balance. They collapsed to the left, Ed on top, the pistol pointing without aiming at the others in the small room.

When Ed landed, his face hammered Jack's forearm and smashed the man's elbow into the concrete floor. Jack's fingers opened on the gun and Ed rolled off his body, reaching for it with his right hand.

Jack was fast. He locked his legs around Ed's knees and used Ed's body as leverage to haul himself up and over Ed's back. They rotated as a single unit toward the gun, which Ed grasped first only because his arms were longer than Jack's by fractions of an inch. He pulled the weapon to his chest and tucked into the roll, pushing off the ground with his left hand and hefting Jack into the wall. But Jack was an anaconda around Ed's upper arms; he'd regain the upper hand quickly. Ed kicked out of the man's leg hold and flicked his wrist to push the gun away, straight out the pantry door into the center of the kitchen. It glided like an ice skater across the smooth concrete much, much farther than he had intended it to go. He watched it slip under the wheeled wood bin that stood next to the brick oven.

“Get it!” he shouted to anyone who would know what he meant.

Leslie was hyperventilating in the corner. His father was bent over Coach, and Ed saw his hands slick with blood coming from the man's thigh. Unbelievable. The cat was gone. Estrella darted out into the kitchen but hadn't seen where the gun went.

If Ed were Leslie, he might have been able to calculate how much time it would take to give Estrella directions to the gun, and how much time it would take him to break loose and get it himself, or whether he should stay and battle the much stronger Jack for the revolver on his ankle, or how swiftly Jack, free of Ed, would shoot his father through the head. If he were his father, he might have been able to pray and get an immediate answer about the wise course of action. If he were Estrella, he would have known whether she knew how to fire the pistol if she found it, or whether Jack would be able to disarm her with a scowl.