two wanted so badly to understand this. Now you're
going to help me finish it."
"Finish ... sending your message," I said, because
it was all coming clear now; too late.
"You didn't tell your parents or the police what
Reuben was doing," I went on. "But you told someone:
Reverend Sondergard. When it got to be too much, you
must have gone to him and asked him to help you."
It was Heywood's only possible link to the
whole thing. But it still didn't explain the Weasel.
"Why ... ?"
"Shut up." We were approaching the narrow door
at the end of the row of brick buildings, their front
windows boarded against mischief so the place looked
more like an abandoned tenement than a high-tech design
studio.
Which was the way Paddy wanted it. He liked that
stark urban contrast between gritty exterior and airy
inside. From the street you couldn't tell anything about
what was going on in there.
"I begged him," Mike said. "Reverend Sondergard.
He told me that I should pray about it. He would
pray too, he said. But I guess," he finished as he urged
us into Paddy's building, "the old coward just didn't
pray hard enough."
Inside, he locked the door behind us and lowered
the bar that Paddy used for extra security. And then
the thing I'd begun fearing back when he appeared in
the cemetery came true:
All of them. The folding chairs that usually resided
along Paddy's long conference table were set out separately
in the big workroom with the overheard lights
glaring down:
Willow Prettymore. Marcus Sondergard. Wade
Sorenson, looking furious but unable to do anything
about it. And George Valentine, likewise incapacitated.
Each had been tied, wrists behind, ankles bound to the
legs of the chairs. Neat and complete.
On the table lay a canvas satchel. I didn't like
thinking about what might be in it; Mike's penchant
for careful planning and preparation made the possibilities
unpleasant.
"How the hell did you do that?" I demanded,
struck by the sheer unmanageability of it. And yet there
they were.
Mike smiled, proud of his accomplishment.
"Paddy was here when I arrived. He was easy. Willow
got here next, and I hit her with a brick. Tied her."
A runnel of blood on Willow's terrified face confirmed
this. Mike gazed around. "Then Marcus arrived."
The enmity in George Valentine's glance at Marcus,
combined with the darkening bruise developing on
George's temple, told me what must have come next.
Marcus had ambushed George, tied him up at Mike's
instruction. Otherwise, Mike had threatened, he would
use the knife on Willow.
"Wade? Are you all right?" There was an enormous
purple lump over his right eye.
He looked disgusted. "He called us separately,
asked us to meet him here. Told each one of us he had
something to say about the murders, couldn't tell anyone
else. Spaced the arrivals five minutes or so apart,
give him time to do the necessary. And then Marcus
ambushed us one at a time. He didn't," Wade added,
"have any choice."
But that still left ... I peered around, puzzled.
"Told me he knew who killed Reuben," Wade
went on, "but he was afraid, needed my help. Fooled
me but good," he finished, angry with himself.
A few feet away from him, Paddy sat glowering,
tied like Marcus. "You should," Paddy said, "have
been praying for brains, you tone-deaf little Jesus
freak."
Paddy had never been a great fan of organized religion,
but I thought this was no time for them to be
sorting out their theological differences. Especially
since, if someone didn't come up with a way out of this
pretty efficiently, it looked as if we were going to be
getting answers to an entire spectrum of deep, important
questions about the afterlife, real soon now.
"Sit." Mike waved at the two remaining chairs.
We didn't have a choice, any more than Marcus
had had. Ellie looked pale but composed, seating herself.
I sat too, readying myself to rocket back up again
the very instant Mike took that knife away from Ellie's
neck, which he would have to do in order to begin
tying one of us.
But then I realized: If Marcus had tied the others to
keep Mike from cutting Willow's throat, who'd tied
Marcus? Not Mike; he was busy doing his knife
handling act.
Then a small voice came from the shadows under
the circular staircase. "Dad?" Molly Carpentier
quavered. "Dad, can we go home now?"
"Get over there and do what I told you," Mike
snapped, his eyes glittering dangerously.
Reluctantly the child came out. In her hands she
held a ball of thick brown twine, the kind all those
hanging planters at the cottage were made of. And if it
could hold up a heavy earth-filled planter without
breaking, it could probably hold us.
Which it did. Molly wrapped the stuff repeatedly
around Ellie's wrists and ankles, then around mine.
"I'll try not to cut off your circulation," she said, tying
the final knot. I didn't have the heart to tell her that
pretty soon I wouldn't have any.
"Mike," I said. "I know you want Molly to get the
message you never got. That she's not alone, that you
will help her if someone gives her trouble. But is this
what you want her to know? That the answer is violence?"
Suddenly Willow Prettymore broke her silence.
"That's a lot of bull. There's no message. Things didn't
go little Mikey's way and now he wants revenge, that's
all. ..."
Mike was at her side in an instant; Willow broke
off and uttered a thin, breathy little scream as the knife
moved fast. A line of bright red ran suddenly down
Willow's pale throat, into the collar of her white
blouse.
"Shut up," Mike whispered. "Or next time I'll
really cut you." Willow stared, whimpering.
"Your time to talk," Mike grated out at her, "was
when you saw him going in my window at night. But
you never told anyone. You were older, I was just a
little kid, I needed help."
Mike looked around contemptuously. "But if Reuben
was after me, then he wasn't after any of you. Isn't
that right? You could forget him for a while. So you
did. All of you ... you just did."
"Why didn't you stand up to him?" Ellie asked
sadly.
He spun on her. "Sure. And be another Boxy
Thorogood, go down hard. It was different for you
guys. You were Reuben's own age. Me and Boxy were
eleven years old."
"Dad," Molly began faintly.
"Quiet." The little girl shrank back, frightened.
"But why hurt Terence?" Paddy asked sadly. "He
didn't have anything to do with any of this. He wasn't
even here."
"He really did fall, that first time," I said to Paddy.
"And hurt his hand. And turned those gas burners on,
himself."
"Yes." He eyed me helplessly. "But the thread he
said he'd tripped on ... it wasn't there. That was his
mind," Paddy mourned heavily, "telling him something
bad was about to happen, he was so intuitive,
Terence was, and then Mike really attacked him. ..."
"Shut up." Mike whirled on him, spitting a reply.
"I mistook him for you in the dark, you artsy little
fake. Always talking about facing Reuben down, always
ready to get into a big argument. But he killed
your own father and you still didn't do anything because
you were afraid. You know it's true, don't you?"
Paddy's face hardened. "What should I have done,
Mike? Drop to his level? Sneak around killing people?"
Like you, his look added clearly, but Mike didn't see it.
"And when he came back," Mike went on,
"threatened to burn down your building, what did you
do?"
He grimaced mockingly. "You whined about it.
'Oh, big, bad Reuben's back, somebody save me.' I
could have told you how well that works," he finished
scornfully.
Outside it was full dark, and beyond Paddy's studio
windows the water was calm, each little fishing
vessel in the boat basin seeming to perch upon a mirror
image of itself. From Campobello, the lights of shops
and houses reflected in straight, bright lines to the water,
like bar codes drawn in Day-Glo markers.
"You didn't jimmy those locks to get into the studio,"
I said, understanding it now. "Terence hadn't
even locked them--he wasn't thinking right, so he'd
left them open."
I looked at Mike. "You thought you were equipped
to break in. You weren't, but then it turned out you
didn't need to. You still broke the door frame, though,
because ..."
Cold comprehension washed over me. "Because if
things had gone entirely your way, Paddy would be
dead by now. And Terence might or might not be here
to let you in. Once you saw how big those locks were,
you decided to give yourself a head start on getting
through that door next time."
Breaking the frame, weakening the structure ...
people think about the locks they install. Too often
they don't worry so much about what that expensive
hardware is set into: solid wood, or a splintered door
frame slammed back together with a couple of good
looking but easily-pulled nails?
On the other hand, it had turned out not to matter,
anyway, because once again, dumb luck had favored
the prepared mind. Too bad that in Mike's case, the
prepared mind had lost a few marbles in the Thou
Shalt Not Kill department.
"You've been planning this a long time, haven't
you, Mike? Planning on finishing things, tying up loose
ends, and doing it here, like this. But I still don't see
how you got Victor's tie, or why you had to kill Weasel."
His face showed exasperation; apparently I didn't
appreciate his cleverness fully enough to satisfy him. "I
watched, and I waited, and I took advantage of every
little thing that happened, that's how. I was outside La
Sardina, saw Reuben and your ex and the rest of you
through the window."