Zero at the Bone (36 page)

The gray eyes continued to assess her.

The sheet moved and an arm, thin and trembling, emerged and crept slowly upward. A long index finger extended and pressed against lips in an exact replica of Katherine’s gesture.

Katherine closed her eyes.
Thank God.
This was Anne Driscoll and she still had her wits about her. Katherine leaned her cane against the bed and lowered herself to sit on the edge. There was so much she wanted to say that for a moment she couldn’t speak at all.

“I’m Katherine Driscoll,” she whispered finally.

“I know.” The voice was faint but surprisingly firm, coming from such a frail body. “I can see. You look exactly like your mother. Why did you take so long to come? Every night I spit out the sleeping pill she gives me and wait.” She spoke out of the right side of her mouth; the left was immobile, frozen into a downward arc. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

“I was bitten by a venomous snake yesterday at the zoo. A bushmaster.”

The gray eyes closed for several seconds, then opened wide. “We need to get out of here. Cooper hired Beechum to keep me from seeing you or making the changes I planned to…” Here she had to stop and draw some long shuddering breaths. She lifted her hand to ask for time, then let it fall weakly to her chest. Talking was clearly a strain.

Katherine filled in the silence. “Cooper has been misusing foundation money, too,” she said as she reached into her coat pocket for the photographs to prove it.

Anne Driscoll stared at her as if she were a slow child. “You mean that thing about selling zoo animals to the game ranches?” The hand that rested on her chest raised slightly in a dismissive gesture. “I know all about that.”

Katherine sucked in her breath. Nothing could have surprised her more. “You know?”

“Of course. Your father told me and showed me the photographs the day we made the bargain about you.” Her words were clipped and businesslike, even though the voice was weak.

“Bargain about me?”

“Of course. You’ve come for the money, haven’t you?”

Katherine felt her head spinning. “What money?”

“The hundred-thousand-dollar advance. For you to run the Driscoll Foundation. Your father must have told you about our bargain.”

“My father’s dead. He was killed at the zoo three weeks ago. Murdered.
Before we had a chance to talk.
”

Anne gasped and tried to sit up, but the energy required seemed too much for her. Her head fell back to the pillow as if it were too heavy a weight for her to lift.

“Tell me about the bargain with my father,” Katherine said.

“He agreed not to make a scandal with the pictures he’d taken if I would agree to fire Cooper and make you foundation director. And pay you a hundred thousand dollars—as your first year’s fee. He insisted that you get it in advance. Your father thought he was blackmailing me, but I liked the idea.”

She stopped to catch her breath. “I’ve been waiting for him to come back. Lying here wondering all this time. He was going to bring you along so we could discuss foundation plans. I should have known something had happened to him. He said he’d be back in a few days and he’s—was—a man of his word.” She stopped and gasped for air.

Katherine felt like a cartoon character with a light bulb suddenly flashing above her head.

Of course. I’ve been so slow.

It all fits.

The money. In his letter he wrote that it was available immediately, not that he had it. He didn’t have any money to give, so he blackmailed Anne into giving it. And what she would do in return—the thing that only she could do—was to be director of the Driscoll Foundation. Because it had to be headed by a family member.

Anne was talking again. “My mistake was telling Cooper what I intended to do before I did it. He hired Beechum and they stopped letting anyone in to see me and they won’t bring me the newspaper or let me use the telephone. He thinks I’m dying. This medication they force on me is supposed to help me along, I suppose, keep me drugged up until I die.” Her nostrils flared. “But I’m not going to. We’re going to get out of here.” She stopped and studied Katherine’s face for a few seconds, breathing deeply, her thin chest rising and falling under the sheet. “Cooper didn’t kill him, did he?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it has anything to do with Cooper and what he’s been doing at the foundation. Travis Hammond was murdered, too, the day after my father.”

Anne flinched as if she’d been slapped. “Travis, too,” she murmured.

“And someone tried to kill me yesterday at the zoo by locking me in a room with the bushmasters. And there have been warning notes—to my father and to Travis, to Alonzo Stokes and to me.” She lowered her head closer to her grandmother’s. “The notes speak of revenge—an eye for an eye. I think it’s because of what happened thirty-one years ago, the night my mother and I left Austin.”

Anne turned her head away and stared at the wall. She locked the fingers of both hands together over her chest, as if she could prevent some secret of the heart from escaping.

Katherine pushed on. She
would
dig it out now. “It’s important for me to know what happened. I’ve lived with these secrets all my life. I know it must be horrible for you to remember, but please talk to me about it.”

Anne kept her eyes fixed on the wall and tensed her fingers.

“I think I already know most of it, anyway,” Katherine said. “About Donald Stranahan. All I need is for you to confirm it. And to fill in some of the blank places.”

Finally Anne turned to face her. “Katherine, there is no good to be gained from going into this. It seems we’ve all been punished adequately already for old sins. This is best left alone.”

“No. It’s past the point where it can be left alone.” Katherine’s voice shook in spite of her efforts to control it. “Alonzo Stokes is in danger. And I am. Goddamn it, my father died for this. Travis Hammond died for it. I’m in danger of dying, too, and I want to know why.”

Anne looked her in the eye. “Not now. The best thing is to get out of here. I want to be admitted to a hospital tonight, get the drugs out of my system. Then we can talk. I need to be alert.” Her voice swelled into the authoritative tone of a woman used to giving orders. “And I want to talk to an attorney. Immediately. Since Travis is dead, John Crowley will do. I’m going to make sure Cooper doesn’t get another cent from me and has no power over my affairs. He will regret this every minute of his life.”

Katherine was amazed at the strength of will in such a frail body. She had no doubt Cooper would regret it all.

“Yes. Of course,” Katherine said. “I’ll arrange it right now. But first I want to know what happened. Some of it I remember. And some of it I’ve worked out. Let me tell you what I think happened.” She tried to engage Anne’s eyes, but the old woman refused to look at her.

“My mother was having an affair with one of my father’s co-workers, Donald Stranahan, wasn’t she?”

The right side of Anne’s mouth trembled. The other side remained frozen in its downward curve. “Your mother…” she began. “Your mother…”

“Was promiscuous,” Katherine finished for her. “I know. I lived with her for eighteen years. And Donald Stranahan sounds like the kind of man she never could resist—an irresponsible, hard-drinking cowboy. I think maybe my father came home and found them together. And something very bad happened.” She looked at Anne for confirmation, but Anne’s face remained blank.

“I think Donald Stranahan got bitten at our house, not at the zoo. And I think you persuaded Alonzo Stokes to cover it up. In return he got a curatorship. A new reptile house. And unlimited funds to build his collection. Right?”

Anne shook her head. “Katherine, there’s no point in going on with this.”

Katherine was unable to stop. It was rolling now and she was aboard. “Am I right? Did it happen at our house?”

Anne said, “It’s all just speculation. Why dig—” She stopped suddenly and her eyes grew wide with alarm.

Katherine thought she heard it, too—a creak on the landing.

They both turned to face the open door.

A dark shape blocked the doorway.

A guttural whisper filled the room. “For Christ’s sake, tell her, you old crone. Tell her what she wants to know. She’s going to die for it, she should know why.”

The man wore jeans and a black leather jacket, open over a white shirt. Something dark hung around his neck. Strands of blond hair surrounded his head like a spiky halo backlit by the lamp in the hall. He closed the door behind him quietly and stepped into the glow of the night-light. Katherine saw the glint of glasses and the thick lids magnified into sleepy folds. He held a big gun close to his body.

“Danny,” she said in astonishment. It was as if the obsequious family lap dog had suddenly turned into a snarling mastiff.

He shook his head hard, as if he were trying to dislodge something. “No. Not that weakling sycophant. Sycophant.” He repeated the word slowly as if he were savoring the syllables. “Call me by my rightful name. Donald. Donald Stranahan, Junior. Or pointman. Take your choice.” He pointed the gun at Katherine. “Come on. Take your choice.”

Katherine whispered it. “Donald.”

“That’s good,” he crooned. His lips pulled back from his teeth, baring them to the gum line. It was the first time Katherine had ever seen his teeth. She had thought he kept them covered because they were bad, but now she saw that they were perfect—beautiful, even, white teeth.

Quickly, as if he had suddenly realized he’d revealed something, he pressed his lips shut and started toward her.

Katherine leaned on the cane and struggled to rise. But in two long strides he was behind her, digging the pistol hard into the back of her neck, pushing up as if he were trying to shove it into her skull.

He stretched his head down close to the woman in the bed. “Tell her, you old bitch, or I’ll splatter her brains all over you. Tell her now,” he said.

Katherine squeezed her teeth together to refrain from crying out in pain. She stared down at her grandmother. The face showed no emotion, not even a flicker of fear.

“I said, tell her.” His voice rose to a shrill pitch. “Now do it.”

Anne Driscoll opened her lips. She spoke calmly, her enunciation exaggerated, as if she were addressing a servant who spoke only rudimentary English. “I can see how you would blame me, Donald, but why her? Let her go and you and I will discuss this.”

In his fury he drilled the muzzle even harder into Katherine’s neck. It felt as if her head were being impaled on a dull stake. “You bitch. You think that I’ve-been-to-college-and-you-haven’t voice is going to stop me? She was there,” he hissed, “and she’s going to pay for it. Her slut of a mother died before I could get to her, so she can take her place.”

Anne spoke again, in measured, even words. “She was a child, sleeping in her bed when it happened. Settle with me. Let her leave. She doesn’t even remember.”

“Oh, she remembers. No one could forget that night. She’s got most of it right, doesn’t she? Since you won’t do it, I’ll help her fill in the blanks.”

He pressed his cheek against Katherine’s and dug the gun deeper into her skull so that she had to press back. “Don’t you remember, little Katie? One of the most important things about that night? I was there. Eight years old, and I saw it all. We’d come to your house before. Often. My daddy brought me because Mother was sick. He’d leave me to play with you while he went into the bedroom with your mother. Only this time, it was different because your father came home. Uh-huh. You got it right, Katherine Driscoll. He caught them in the act.”

His voice began to rise in pitch again. “Oh, I was there all right. I was in the living room watching the snakes in the glass boxes like I always did. After he looked in the bedroom, your daddy closed the door real quiet and came and knelt next to me and he watched the snakes, too. Then my daddy opened the bedroom door. I remember he stood there doing up his belt and laughing like it was all a joke. And you know what he did, your father?” Now his voice was almost a shriek. “He grabbed up that big black snake and slung it at my daddy. Right in his face. Daddy had to pull it off him, tore a chunk out of his cheek doing it.”

He took some deep breaths and lowered his voice. “You’ve never seen anyone die so fast. I guess it was because he was drunk and the snake got him in the face.”

Katherine didn’t know she was going to speak. It was as if the memory were speaking through her. “But the snake was alive in the bedroom. I woke up and saw it there.”

The pointman smiled, showing his perfect teeth. “Yeah. They closed it in the bedroom after it bit him. You found it. It would’ve killed you, too, but for that great dog you had. The dog got it. And then it got the dog.”

Yes.
She remembered.
Pasha was bitten. He yowled and jerked back. The snake rose again, curved into that deadly
S.
Pasha attacked again. This time he snapped and caught the snake. He crushed it in his jaws. The snake struck again, but Pasha held on. Even in death he held on.

The pointman withdrew the gun from her neck and pushed it slowly down her backbone, bruising each vertebra on the way. Katherine closed her eyes, waiting for the bullet that would sever her spine.

But he took the gun off her and shoved it against Anne’s cheek. “Then you came into the act, old woman, when your daughter called you screaming and blubbering. You came running. By then my daddy was dead and you bribed Stokes to cover it all up, like my daddy and me were some filth to be swept under the carpet. Just like it never happened. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you did?”

Katherine winced as she saw the gun press into the delicate skin of her grandmother’s cheek.

“Answer me when I ask you a question,” he shouted. “Isn’t that right? We were so unimportant compared with you Driscolls that you just pretended it didn’t happen. Isn’t that right?”

Katherine wished Anne would answer. She wished they would hear downstairs and call the police. She wished she were back in the hospital with her leg propped up and with the cool sheets against her skin.