The Good Friday Murder (19 page)

“This it?”

“Yes.” I wondered if he could tell I was shaking.

“I'll be out here. Get me one of the twins.” He moved back down the hall toward the stairs.

I went inside and woke Gene. “Gene,” I said softly, “it's me, Kix.”

“Kix?”

“Yes. Listen, do you know where Jonesy's room is?”

He nodded.

“Can you count to twenty?”

“Yes. One, two, three—”

“Shh. That's good. Listen, after I go out, you count to twenty. Then go to Jonesy's room and tell her Chris said to call the police. Can you say that?”

“Kix said call police.”

It would have to do. “Okay. That's good. Now, you wait till I'm outside, then count to twenty. Then find Jonesy.”

“Okay.”

I left him, hoping fervently it would work.

Spanner moved toward me quickly as I left the bedroom. “Where the hell is he?” he said in a whisper.

“I don't know. They changed the room. Somebody else is in there. It's not the twins.” I was speaking quietly but out loud. I started down the hall, away from the Talleys' room, away from the stairs. When I got to the next door, I opened it and looked in. “They're not here.” I moved forward.

Spanner caught my arm. “Keep your goddamn voice down! You know damn well where they are. Take me to their room.” He was in a fury, his voice shaking as it rose in pitch.

“There are some bigger rooms back here,” I said, pulling him toward the back of the building. “Let me look.” I opened another door and peered in, waiting until I heard Gene open his door behind us and run out. “They're not here.” The occupant of the room turned over in bed at the sound of my voice.

Spanner shook me. He was in such a rage, I was afraid he might shoot me just to sate his anger. I had to keep him at bay until the police arrived, which might be five minutes or more.

“You bitch,” he said, nearly frothing at the mouth. He pushed me toward the next door, opened it himself, and looked in. A woman sat up in bed, looked at him, and screamed. He slammed the door and went to the next door, which was around a corner.

There were stirrings now in the rooms, but no sound of sirens. What if Gene hadn't delivered the message correctly? What if Jonesy decided to investigate herself, coming upstairs in a nightgown to look around? Spanner would have two hostages instead of one, and a possible panic among the residents.

Suddenly the light went on in the hallway. Spanner pulled me in front of him, pinning my hands in front of me with his arm. In his other hand I could see the gun.

“Spanner,” a familiar voice called, “this is Sergeant Brooks of the New York City police. Put your weapon down and walk toward the stairs.”

“Jack,” I called to let him know I was there. Then I relaxed.

In some ways I am ridiculously naive. When I heard Jack's voice, I really thought it was all over, that Spanner would let me go, put down his gun, and give himself up. I guess that tells you more about me than about anything else. Spanner clearly had no intention of giving up without a fight, and I was to be his shield and his weapon.

We had turned the corner before we heard Jack's voice, and down the hall on the wall was a large
EXIT
sign lighted in red. I had been present at least once during a fire drill, and the residents knew what “exit” meant and knew how to get out. So, apparently, did Gerry Spanner.

He pushed me toward the fire stairs as I heard someone running toward us from behind. Inside the door there were stairs in both directions. For a moment I thought he was going to try for the roof, but he changed his mind and we started down. He was pushing me so hard, I was afraid I'd fall and kill us both, but somehow I made it to the first floor safely.

As we ran, the door on the second floor opened and a man's voice called, “Let her go, Spanner. There's nowhere you can go now.” Footsteps started down the stairs behind us. The voice wasn't Jack's, and I realized the local police had arrived.

“I'll kill her,” Spanner shouted, and I thought, He means it. He's desperate.

The gun was along my waist, pointing forward. With a flick of his wrist, Spanner could easily have turned it in to my body.

At the bottom of the stairs, a door opened onto the terrace at the back of the Greenwillow wing. Spanner pushed it open. Lights had been turned on everywhere, and we practically walked into Jack's arms.

“It's okay, Chris,” he said, and I nodded.

“Out of the way,” Spanner said, and Jack backed off slowly.

Like a snapshot frozen forever, his face at that moment is imprinted in my mind. All the features were the same, but the composite was someone I had never met. There was no almost smile on his lips, no warmth in his eyes, no hint of the low-key, easygoing man I was half in love with.

Spanner turned around and pulled me backward so that we faced Jack, so that if he shot, I would be hit. I couldn't imagine where Spanner was going to take me. My car was parked half a mile away, and I had no idea where his was, if he had one.

Suddenly Jack yelled, “No!” to someone behind us, and Spanner pulled me backward roughly as he leaned against the wall. Two policemen stood facing us to the left while Jack was to our right. I was sure I heard a click as one of the local policemen cocked his gun.

“Drop the guns, cops,” Spanner shouted.

Nothing happened. It was like a film frozen on one terrifying frame.

“Now!” Spanner screamed, tightening his hold on me. “I'll kill her. Drop them.” He waved his gun around, then brought it back and pushed it into my side.

The three men moved in a kind of crazy slow motion, laying their guns on the ground, then straightening up. Pushing me ahead of him, Spanner picked up all three and dropped them into his shirt. From the look of them, they must have
weighed about ten pounds. I could feel them against my back as he pressed me toward him.

“Back,” he ordered the two local policemen, and they retreated very slowly to where Jack was standing. Then he pushed me and we started running.

I knew we were heading for the door to the hospital basement. I knew, too, that no one would chance shooting, because a bullet that hit Spanner might go right through him and into me. That had been why Jack had shouted No. We made it through the door, and Spanner took a moment to lock it. Then we started down the long, dim corridor away from Greenwillow.

“Just keep quiet and you may survive this,” Spanner said as we ran.

He obviously knew his way around. We passed one stairway and then ducked into another and went up. There was a big “1” on the wall at the head of the stairs, and he pushed the door open. We were on a corridor that stretched endlessly in both directions. Spanner pushed me to the right and we started running again.

By now he was panting hard, his breath hot around my neck. It occurred to me he must be at least in his mid-sixties and he wasn't in especially good shape, or so it seemed to me. I probably had a couple of miles of running ahead of me until I began to feel fatigued, but I was awfully tired. Listening to his labored breathing, smelling the stench of his sweat, I wondered how much longer he could hold out.

It wasn't much. We left the hospital through a fire door on the front side, and Spanner stopped and leaned against the building to catch his breath. In the parking circle near the main entrance to our right I could see a police car with its light rotating on the roof. That was probably Spanner's means of escape. I didn't want it to be my death conveyance. If I got into that car, I was dead. There was no time to think, to figure, to weigh, to measure. It was act now or die. I made my move.

Rallying what was left of my strength, I pulled away from him, heard him shout, “Hey!” and come after me. He
grabbed the back of my blouse, and I lost my footing and came down on him.

That was when I heard the explosion. It was so loud and so close that I screamed and pulled away. Spanner had released me. I looked back at him from where I was sitting on the concrete walk. He had keeled over on the ground, and it went through my mind that he must have had a heart attack from the exertion.

Police came charging toward us, some from the left, where Greenwillow was, some from the right, where the entrance to the hospital was. Two armed cops moved in first, their guns pointed at the unmoving Spanner.

Jack was suddenly next to me, shielding my view of Spanner.

“What happened?” I asked.

One of the cops I couldn't see answered my question. “Looks like his arsenal got him.”

I felt foggy. “I don't understand.”

Jack looked away, then slid his arm around me and held me, both of us sitting on the ground like a couple of children. “One of the guns in his shirt went off.”

“Oh no,” I said, and I was instantly overcome with the worst case of chills I have ever experienced.

Someone found a blanket for me—we were, after all, outside a hospital—and Spanner was put on a stretcher, the guns removed from his shirt after it was ripped open so that a doctor and nurse could begin working on the wound.

I started thinking again. “Jack, my keys. Spanner put them in his pocket.”

Jack wrapped the blanket around me so it would stay in place and got up. There was a conference around the stretcher, and he came back with my keys. My bag was probably somewhere at Greenwillow, most likely on the fire stairs.

At the thought of Greenwillow, my responsibilities came back to me. “I've got to get to Greenwillow,” I told him.

“There's time.”

“No. Right now.”

He talked briefly with a uniformed officer whom I took to
be the local chief of police, and then he came back and helped me up. We were driven the short distance to Greenwillow in a police car. Jonesy opened the front door for us. She looked scared to death.

“Where's my cousin?” I asked as we walked in. “Where's Gene?”

“In my room.”

We followed her to her small apartment on the first floor. Gene was sitting on her bed in his pajamas, looking desolate.

“Gene,” I said, “are you okay?”

He shook his head.

“What's the matter?”

“No eighteen.”

“I don't understand.” I sat beside him and put my arm around him.

“No eighteen,” he said, and he sounded near tears.

“Did you ask him to count or something?” Jonesy asked.

“Yes. To twenty and then find you.”

“Well, he forgot eighteen, and I thought that's what he was coming down and waking me up to ask me.”

“Gene,” I said, hugging him, “you were wonderful. You were marvelous.”

He brightened up. “One, two, three—”

“It doesn't matter. Eighteen doesn't matter. You were a real hero.”

He was all smiles.

“Come,” I said, “let's get you up to bed.”

It turned out the Talley twins had slept through the commotion, so that the events of the night would not be part of their repertoire. Jack took me home, and sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of hot tea, he filled me in on what I didn't already know.

“I started worrying when you didn't answer your phone all afternoon. I called the Oakwood police and asked them to check out your house. They found the broken window, the open door, and the phone cords missing. I got there as fast
as I could, but no one had seen you since your neighbor stopped to talk to you this afternoon.”

“That was just before I got home. He was inside, waiting forme.”

“I figured. Anyway, we checked out Greenwillow and didn't find anything. The twins were okay, no one suspicious had been there, and we couldn't find your car.”

“My car.” I would have to pick it up tomorrow. “It's parked off the road about half a mile from the hospital.”

“I know. One of the local cops spotted it while we were waiting. I didn't think Spanner would try to break in. I was expecting him to call and offer a trade, you for one of the twins. When he dragged you into the hospital, I started to see how he had managed it. Did he tell you much?”

“Only that Gerry Spanner was dead and buried and he had had a different identity for forty years.”

“It's probably true. I did a little digging today. He joined the army in the Korean War, which started a couple of months after the Talley murder. The records show that Private Gerry Spanner was killed in action. I started looking for survivors in his platoon to establish the facts and came up with a couple of likely KIAs, guys he could have changed identities with. Two of them were orphans.”

“You mean when someone else died, he switched dog tags and became someone else?”

“Either that or he killed someone, blew him up with a grenade so he couldn't be identified. Maybe Spanner even got himself lost for a while and then reported in as someone else to another unit where he wasn't known. There's always a lot of confusion after a major action.”

“What an awful life he must have lived,” I said, “knowing every minute was a lie.”

“That was his choice. And he deserved a little agony. Look at what he did to a woman and her sons. He took away the most important person in their lives and then stole the next forty years from them.”

I nodded. I was beyond talking. It was closer to when I usually wake up than to when I usually go to sleep. Jack
came up with me, kissed me, and went back downstairs. I had forgotten to ask if he was staying, forgotten to offer him a pillow. About all I could think of was closing my eyes.

I awoke about ten, smelling coffee. Jack was making breakfast when I got down.

“They gave me today off so we can clean up the mess up here. You'll have to make a statement to the local police today, and probably the county district attorney.”

“Today I can do anything.”

He bought some telephone cords, restoring my service. Then we went down to the police station and I told my story, which took a fairly long time. It seemed like there were a million questions. The story was, after all, forty years long. When we were finished, we had lunch.

“I also checked up on your favorite suspect, Patrick Talley,” Jack said when we were waiting for our sandwiches.

I grinned at him. “What did you find?”

“Well, for openers, he was wanted by the FBI.”

“Then he was involved in insurance fraud.”

“They sure think so. But once he left for the Bahamas, that was the last they ever saw of him. And by the way, Mrs. Talley, if she's still alive, hasn't been back to the States in over fifteen years.”

“Living the good life with her husband's ill-gotten gains.”

“Looks that way.”

I was still a little peeved that I had been wrong about Patrick. “It seemed so logical,” I said. “No one had more to gain than he.”

“Except Spanner. For Spanner, killing Mrs. Talley was a matter of life and death.”

After lunch we drove over to Greenwillow.

Virginia must have seen us from her window, because she came out to the car. “I have some very bad news,” she said.

I felt the cold chill. “What is it?”

“James has been hospitalized. They think it may be a heart attack.”

I have a rather childish habit of pointing out facts to counter news of happenings I cannot deal with. “They slept through everything last night,” I said, hoping she would tell me I was right and therefore what she had said could not possibly be true.

“The doctor thinks it may have been the effects of the poisoning, the anxiety of the last days. The truth is, men have heart attacks on golf courses and no one ever knows why.”

“Is Robert with him?”

“They thought it would be better if he weren't.”

“It isn't better.” I got out of the car, feeling angry. “Doctors don't know everything. Where's Robert?”

She took us to the patio, and I introduced Jack along the way. Robert was sitting by himself with the old lost look on his face. “Come with me,” I said, and he came along in his old docile manner.

We went to the cardiac unit, and I persuaded the nurse on duty to let Robert and me in. James was hooked up to half a dozen wires and tubes and seemed to be asleep. I held Robert's hand and we stood near the bed, not saying anything. About a minute passed. Then James's eyes opened and the twins looked at each other. Then there was a small smile.

I remembered what Dr. Courtland had said about Gerry Spanner's proposed experiments. He had wanted to see whether they functioned as savants when their backs were to each other, when they were certain distances away, when a wall was between them. I was convinced James had sensed his brother's presence in his sleep and opened his eyes to acknowledge it.

Robert sat on a chair and I walked away, leaving them together. The nurse, however, was insistent that Robert stay no longer then ten minutes. I tried to suggest having Robert sleep on a cot near his brother, but she wouldn't hear of it. I took Robert back to the waiting room where Jack was waiting, and we all walked back to Greenwillow.

One of my neighbors had stayed in the house to wait for the glazier, so when we got back, the window had been fixed. I walked into the dining room and saw my papers spread out. All that work, and now it was over.

“I feel at loose ends,” I said.

“Looking for an excuse not to prepare for your poetry course?”

“No excuses.” I started gathering my papers.

“Chris.”

I turned from the table, and he put his arms around me.

“Think there'll be something there for us when we don't have the Talley murder to kick around?”

“I think so.” It felt so good. “I know so.”

“So do I.”

That evening, alone and unafraid, I started through the poems. He was right about the old ones; they were all about love and death, but the best ones were love, and I felt a new appreciation of it. Lines that had once described something universal but not of my world now sang to me, all those blissful poets of four centuries ago, opening their hearts to their coy mistresses or coy loves:

Clip me no more in those dear arms,

Nor thy life's comfort call me,

O these are but too powerful charms,

And do but more enthral me!

But see how patient I am grown

In all this coil about thee:

Come, nice thing, let my heart alone,

I cannot live without thee!

Jack, my nice thing.

I fell asleep dreaming of the rapture of the contemporary American woman, myself.