The Skeleton's knee

32

The state police unit missed Susan Pendergast by seconds. They arrived at the address we’d traced-a general store in a village north of Rutland-and found the phone still warm. But there was no sign of Billie. They quickly checked the area around the store, called in extra units for a wider search, and came up empty-handed.

Two hours later, I was standing in Tony Brandt’s office, staring out the window while he finished listening to the tape of my phone conversation with Billie.

He hit the off button on the recorder and sat back in his chair. “Well, that explains at least half of this case.”

“Not the half that got us involved.”

He thought back a moment. “Yeah. Must’ve hit a nerve, unless she just got distracted by the state police rolling up.”

“I think something happened between her brother and Sean, and she still has a tough time dealing with it. Either that or she’s guilty of more than just tagging along with a couple of bad boys.”

“You mean she might’ve killed her own brother?”

“It’s possible. Suppose David begins pushing his weight around, demanding all the money. Things fall apart, and blam-he shoots Sean-maybe Sean pulled a gun on him. Who knows? Susan implied things went sour between them. Anyway, Susan grabs a gun and shoots David. Susan buries her brother because Sean’s too badly hurt to help; she hangs around to nurse Sean back to health; and then, unable to deal with all the guilt and emotional baggage between them, she and Sean split up-she to be reborn as Billie Lucas and he to become a hermit.”

He shrugged. “It still doesn’t tell us where she is now.”

I thought about Susan being reborn, and about her not counting on us to save her from Shattuck. She had described David and Shattuck analyzing ways to blend into the local population. It occurred to me that although she’d been gone several days, she’d called us from near Rutland, only seventy miles away.

“I’ve got an idea,” I told Brandt. “I think Susan-or Billie, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself now-has a backup plan, another identity she’s been saving for a rainy day. She was worried about the Mob and Shattuck on the phone, but she didn’t seem that worried about us, and she’d obviously planned an escape from that general store beforehand. This is not a woman running blind, Tony. I want to check the records again at the town clerk’s.”

The same clerk’s assistant who’d helped us the day before watched me come through the door with obvious dismay. I remembered we’d caused her to stay open way past normal closing hours. “Sorry we loused you up yesterday.”

Her eyes dropped to the counter. “It’s okay.”

I made my way back to the same oversized books we’d searched before. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

She followed me back and gave me a weak smile. “Would you like some help?”

I didn’t want to pull in my people from the field, who were still out checking leads to Susan’s whereabouts; accepting her offer might both speed things up and make her feel a little better about having her office invaded again. She also knew the records intimately.

I put her to work on the death records, while I combed the birth certificates. One by one, I called out the names of female children born in the mid-1940s, and she checked if there were any corresponding death dates. Each time there was, I gave the name to Brandt over the phone and he typed it into his computer, which was linked to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I was hoping we could conjure up another fifty-year-old ghost with an up-to-date driver’s license.

An hour later, we struck gold with the name Marie Benoit.

It had been a long shot, and for a moment, I had difficulty accepting my luck. “You’re shitting me. Where does she live?”

“Wheelock, Vermont-the Northeast Kingdom. I know that area; it’s northwest of Lyndonville.”

“Damn.” I slammed down the phone, thanked the assistant clerk profusely, and ran back to Brandt’s office.

With success came concern that we might lose our advantage. Neither one of us had forgotten what had happened to Gary Schenk, whom Shattuck had obviously found by putting a tail on either Dennis or me. Now that we were hoping we’d located Susan Pendergast, we didn’t want to make the same mistake twice, nor did we want to involve another police department.

The solution turned out to be Al Hammond-the Windham County Sheriff. A seasoned politician, a lifelong law-enforcement officer-with several years in the state police and elsewhere-and, most important, one of Tony Brandt’s best friends, Al was also the owner of a small single-engine plane.

Brandt and I broke out maps and phone books, looking for appropriate landing sites and ways to get from the plane to Wheelock. We didn’t want to use another police agency to help us out. We were still smarting at the fact that a highly visible state police cruiser had tipped Susan to how close we’d gotten to her. If that was to happen again, it was going to be our fault alone.

We found an airfield just north of Lyndonville, and a friend of mine from St. Johnsbury who was willing to have a pickup truck waiting for me-no questions asked. Departure was planned from the grass strip in Dummerston-between Putney and Brattleboro-at 5:30 that afternoon, the soonest that Al Hammond could get away from his office.

Brandt escorted me out to the parking lot when I was ready to leave. “I wish I was coming with you.”

I shook his hand, a formal gesture that belied my casual tone. “If we’ve done this right, I should be back by late tonight-with Susan Pendergast.”

He merely pursed his lips. “You bring a gun?”

I patted my hip, under my jacket.

He pulled the department’s cellular phone out of his pocket.

“Take this, too. You get your ass in a crack, you can at least call in the cavalry.”

The cumulative toll of the attack on Gail, finding Schenk beaten, and just missing Susan Pendergast-on top of very little sleep-had left me jittery and beat. Two hours of flying at several thousand feet above Vermont’s soft, verdant mountains, following the broad, gleaming, sinewy track of the Connecticut River, obliquely lit by a sinking sun, did wonders to dispel the nervousness that had knotted up inside me.

The sun was just touching the hills by the time we landed at the Caledonia County State Airport, leaving a slowly fading golden light in its wake. I thanked Al for his help, then headed north on Route 122 in my friend’s borrowed Ford 150 pickup truck.

A quick four miles later, I came to Wheelock, a pleasant double row of houses lining the road for an eighth of a mile. I drove slowly, the ease of the flight replaced once again by apprehension and doubt. I pulled over in front of a house where an elderly woman was on her knees, fretting over an immaculate garden.

“Excuse me.”

She looked up, pushing her glasses back in place with the back of her gloved hand. “Hi there.”

“I’m looking for Marie Benoit. I hear she lives around here.”

The woman smiled and jerked her head to one side, indicating the north. “The house at the top of the hill, just before you leave town, on the right.”

“Thanks.” I put the truck back into gear.

“She’s not there, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yup. Went to the circus.”

“The circus?”

“Bread and Puppet, up in Glover.”

I nodded. “Right-I’ve heard of it.”

“They’re having a big to-do-lots of people. Too much for me. Besides, I think those people are a little funny, anyway. Nice, but funny. Marie likes ’em, though.”

“Have you known Marie long?”

“Almost twenty years now. Don’t know her well, of course. She’s not here very often, and keeps pretty much to herself, but she’s a friendly thing-just private. You a friend of hers, as well?”

“I met her in Brattleboro. She said nice things about Wheelock.”

The woman glanced back at her garden. “Well, I’m running out of light.”

I looked at her for a moment, suddenly feeling cold and slightly ill. “You asked if I was a friend of hers, ‘as well.’ Was there someone else looking for her today?”

She straightened, again shoving her glasses back. “Yes. Came by about half an hour ago.”

“Thin man? Gray hair tied back in a ponytail?”

“That’s him.”

I thanked her, drove to the top of the hill, pulled off the road into Marie Benoit’s driveway, and switched on Brandt’s cellular phone. If ever there was a need for the cavalry he’d mentioned, this was it-except that there wasn’t much cavalry in this part of Vermont.

Brandt was still at the office, as we’d agreed earlier. “What’s up?”

“Shattuck’s already here-he’s got a half-hour lead on me.”

“Shit. Where are you?”

“Wheelock. Susan Pendergast has gone to the Bread and Puppet Circus in Glover-they’re apparently putting on a big show. I need people-as many as you can round up.”

I started the truck again and began driving as fast as I could up the road toward Glover, some eight miles farther on, cradling the phone in the crook of my neck. I could hear Brandt on the other end shouting instructions to someone in the background.

He came back on. “Joe-how did he do it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it. Get hold of that clerk’s assistant who helped us out with the birth records. I didn’t give it any thought at the time, but when I was in there last, she seemed a little out of it-under stress somehow. Shattuck trained Susan Pendergast in urban guerrilla tactics. The town clerk’s office would’ve been a natural place for him to start looking for her.”

“I’ll check it out. Keep that phone with you.”

I drove as quickly as I could along the narrow, twisting road. The oddly named Bread and Puppet Circus had been founded years earlier as an alternative to traditional indoor theater. It was socially political in its rhetoric, loosely organized, and supported by volunteers and low-paid workers. It also staged its performances out-of-doors, both locally and in other parts of the world. What made it unique among other vestiges of early countercultural street theater, however, was its use of props. Bread and Puppet-which also made and sold bread to raise money-was famous for its papier-mâché masks, statuary, and “puppets,” some of which were fifteen feet tall and carried on the ends of long poles by white-dressed attendants. The effect of seeing these looming, gaunt, often grim-faced giants high over the heads of the audience strewn across the grass, with only the mountains and the sky as backdrop, was alternately enchanting, mystical, unnerving, and downright ominous.

This, combined with the unique music and the unconventionally delivered social messages-along with the tough but savory bread-made it a very popular attraction. If the Circus was putting on an especially big performance, I expected to find hundreds of people in attendance.

I began seeing cars parked on the shoulders on both sides of the road a half mile from my destination. I continued on more slowly, unsure of the geography. I’d seen photographs of the circus and read articles about them, but I’d never actually been up here before. What also fueled my caution was a conviction that if Shattuck knew Susan Pendergast was here, he knew I wasn’t far behind.

I passed a dirt road on the left with a “Bread and Puppet Circus” banner strung across it and then immediately came to a gathering of buildings by the road-a huge barn attached to a farmhouse on the right, opposite a rough shed and a couple of colorfully decorated but decrepit school buses. In front of the barn was a driveway with a prominent “No Parking” sign. I backed my truck in and killed the engine.

I got out and looked around warily. Up and down the road were hundreds of cars, vans, and trucks. And yet there was not a soul in sight.

I walked over to the barn, a gigantic three- or four-story whale of a building, weather-beaten and sagging, and pushed open a small side door marked “Museum.” It was dark and silent inside. The ramshackle white house attached to one side seemed equally abandoned.

On the soft breeze, I heard the muffled thumping of distant drums. I crossed over to the dirt road with the banner. It, too, was lined with cars, and led downhill, curving to the right. The sounds of music-pipes, more drums, instruments I couldn’t identify-had grown louder.

At the bottom of the curve, around a small outcropping of trees, I came within sight of a broad field, some distance off, that had been cut into the side of a hill years before-perhaps as an old gravel pit. Now, softened and disguised by grass and passing time, it had become a perfect amphitheater, its three green walls gently sloping toward the flat, circular “stage” at the bottom.

I stopped close by the trees, still under their protection, and surveyed the scene. The Bread and Puppet Circus was in full swing, its many members dancing and carrying their trademark towering puppets to the accompaniment of odd and exotic-sounding musical instruments. But they were facing the same way I was-directly into the crowd of well over a thousand people. If I continued the way I was heading, I would come out into full view of the crowd as I followed a well-worn trail that swept up and around the right side of the back of the amphitheater. For several minutes, I would be clearly visible to everyone watching the show.

I retreated up the road a short way and cut into the woods that bordered the left side of the amphitheater, hoping to come out above and south of the old pit, where my appearance would pass largely unnoticed. It was becoming darker-I guessed the half-light following sunset would be completely gone in about forty-five minutes-and I was becoming pessimistic about ever locating Susan Pendergast.

I was almost to my goal, but still in the woods, when the soft chirping of the cellular phone brought me to a halt. I pulled it out and answered.

“We found the assistant town clerk,” Brandt said, his voice thin and distant. “She’s dead.”

“Oh, Christ.” I was suddenly seized with a violent anger, directed both at Shattuck’s casual bloodthirstiness and my own inability to bring it to an end.

“She was at home. It looks like a broken neck. She probably told him what he wanted to know, and then he killed her so she wouldn’t talk. I guess you were right about him staking out her office-maybe he’d already gotten to her and was holding something over her… Coercing her somehow. If so, all he had to do was wait ’til we’d done his research for him, before driving up to Motor Vehicles in Montpelier for a current address, no questions asked… Where are you now?”

“I’m just about to start searching the crowd. You got backup coming?”

“There was a domestic brawl somewhere in your general area. It’s got almost everybody tied up, but they’re trying to break people loose. They’re moving as fast as they can, but they got to cover the distance.”

“Have them block off the roads when they arrive. If they get here before the show ends, they should have everybody stay where they are. That’s got to play to our advantage. And tell them to bring lots of lighting. It’s going to be dark soon. And, Tony?” I added as an afterthought. “Get hold of Al Hammond at the LynBurke Motel. He was planning to spend the night there. Maybe he can help out.”

“Right.”

I switched off the phone and stepped out of the woods into the mowed swath that curved around the upper semicircle of the amphitheater. What I saw filled me with hopelessness and frustration-a thousand people, many of them with their backs to me, sitting on the grass, jammed together in a solid sea, amid the rapidly failing light.

I joined a fringe of people at the back who were mostly standing, many of them equipped with either still or video cameras. I walked up to an older man with several Nikons around his neck.

“Excuse me. Could I ask you a big favor?” I said in a low voice.

He looked at me with a startled expression. “Sure-what’s up?”

I pulled my badge out and discreetly showed it to him. “My name is Lieutenant Joe Gunther; I’m from the Brattleboro Police Department. I’m looking for someone in this crowd. I know it sounds a little crazy, but I was wondering if I could borrow one of your long lenses so I could see better.”

He stared at me for a moment, the smile fading from his face. “Are you putting me on?”

“No-I’m quite serious, and I’m running out of time.”

Something in my voice or expression must have done the trick, because he bent down to the bag at his feet and came out with a monstrous telephoto lens that he quickly snapped onto one of the camera bodies around his neck. He then slipped it off and handed it to me. “It’s the biggest one I’ve got. You’re not going anywhere with it, are you?”

“Only along the edge here. Stay with me. If I spot the person I’m after, I’ll pass you the camera and get out of your hair.”

He nodded and stepped back slightly to give me more room.

I hefted the camera up to eye level and began scanning the faces of the crowd on the bank opposite me. Beyond them, across a distant, overgrown field, I could see the dimly lit top of the barn where I’d parked my truck.

It was an impressive lens-high-quality, one thousand millimeters, very clear. Even in this light, it functioned well, allowing me a distinct close-up view of even the most distant faces. As I moved from one person to the next, carefully sweeping from left to right, I began to feel more optimistic. Given enough time and enough light, finding Susan Pendergast again became a possibility-assuming she was here at all.

Of course, hers wasn’t the only face I was seeking, and I knew that if Shattuck was also searching for her, he, too, would be on high ground, studying the crowd. I had therefore begun my sweep with the people on the crest of the amphitheater.

That, as it turned out, was a piece of incredible luck, not for what I saw on that crest but in the distance behind it. Over the shoulder of one of the spectators I’d focused on, in the field separating the distant road from where we stood, I caught the blur of something bobbing up and down.

I refocused the lens. The bobbing turned into a man, his back to me, running toward the barn, a telltale ponytail swinging from side to side.

“Shit,” I muttered, and handed the camera back to its owner.

“You found him?”

I didn’t pause to answer. I was sprinting off as fast as I could, a good quarter mile behind.

I hadn’t seen Susan, but the absolute certainty that Shattuck had beaten me to her was utterly clear to me. The quiet, almost unnoticed death of a backwoods hermit with a false name and a secret stash of money had led me here with fate’s inexorable momentum. I had stood by in ignorance while Kevin Shilly had been cruelly murdered. Was I again too late to stop the murder of the one person left I had the power to save?

I discovered a narrow trail that cut through the field and the line of trees that bordered the road, making my progress better than I’d expected. Nevertheless, when I reached the road, it was empty.

I crossed the road to my truck, listening, my gun now in my hand, hoping for some sign to tell me where Shattuck had gone. Instinctively, as if drawn by its magnetic mass, my eyes went to the huge dark barn and to the museum door I’d pushed open earlier to look inside: I had closed that door behind me. It now stood open.

I went up the steps silently, pausing just outside, my back against the wall, trying to remember the layout I’d only just glimpsed before. Directly opposite the door was a broad set of stairs leading up to the museum; to the left was a gift-shop area, with bins full of prints, metal postcard racks, and various T-shirt displays. Beyond that had been three other doorways too dark to see into. To the right of the entrance was either a wall or another door-I couldn’t remember.

I took a deep breath, gripped my gun with both hands, and swung inside, pivoting on my heel so that I ended up crouching at the foot of the stairs, my back against the wall, facing both the upstairs and the darkened gift-shop area. Almost immediately, I heard the single soft scrape of a foot somewhere above me.

I moved up the stairs slowly, my attention focused ahead, but also aware of any movement from beyond the gift shop. The wood beneath me was ancient, worn, and scarred, but solid and utterly silent, all the creaks and groans long ago beaten out of it.

The steps led up through the floor above, so that I had to crouch just below floor level and stick my head up quickly for a fast survey. What I saw was the source of dreams and nightmares-a huge, looming dark cavern of a room, columned and laced overhead by giant wooden support posts and beams-a classic monument of timber-frame construction, with bracing and counter-bracing made of massive hand-adzed, tree-sized poles, linked in countless mortise and tenon joints. It was a structure of cathedral-like complexity, and all of it-the posts, the walls, the ceilings, and the two galleries lining the central aisle-was covered or populated with the papier-mâché manifestations of decades of whimsy-driven puppeteers. Masks of humans, clowns, animals, and demons hung everywhere; bodies made of sheets fell from enormous, pale, frozen-faced heads like stalactites; serried ranks of twelve-foot human forms, some with the faces of gargoyles, stood guard by the dozen; and everywhere, from every angle, row after tightly packed row of those large, dark, sightless eyes stared out at whatever passed before them.

Susan Pendergast, if she was here, had chosen well-this was a place of confusion and befuddlement, of hope for the pursued and despair for the pursuer, where stillness and silence reigned, where movement meant revelation and death.

And yet move I had to if I was to finally thwart one man’s twenty-four years of rage and save the life of a woman who’d made living an act of survival.

The two parallel floor-level galleries I’d noticed during my quick inspection were each separated from the central aisle by continuous three-foot-high wooden barricades, also festooned with decorative baubles, masks, and designs. Both galleries contained a variety of three-dimensional set pieces-frozen, puppet-peopled scenes of diners at table, animals at play, or simply a crowd of people gathered as in an audience. They were dense and layered and offered a protective maze of cover, assuming I could reach them.

I figured Shattuck knew I was here and that he was watching where I was hiding as carefully as he was searching for Susan. To try stealth to reach cover, therefore, was obvious folly. Dark as it was-and it was difficult seeing even the nearest wall in any detail-I would still be visible to anyone watching. An explosive entry, with a scramble to safety, seemed the only alternative. It also might destabilize Shattuck’s stalking of Susan enough to give her an advantage of some kind.

I firmly planted my feet on the steps, rocked forward slightly, and launched myself in a sprinter’s half-crouch toward the three-foot barricade of the nearest gallery. I sailed over it in a dive, tucking my head in to land in a somersault, and crashed into a trio of puppets sitting around a small linen-covered table. I landed in a tangled sprawl amid hollow oversized bodies, a cloud of dust, and fragments of broken wood. Spurred on by the fear of a bullet, I twisted onto all fours and crawled as swiftly and silently as possible away from my calamitous landing site.

There was no bullet, however, nor any sound whatsoever. Stealthily now, I repositioned myself farther up the gallery, under the billowing skirts of a lady twice my height in Colonial dress, still hearing no more than my own quiet breathing. I rose slowly up the center of the puppet, alongside the central wooden pole on which she hung, careful not to touch the fabric surrounding me. Moving in slow motion, I pulled out my Swiss Army pocketknife and, using the small scissors blade, meticulously and quietly cut a tiny window in front of my right eye.

Through this opening, I had a fairly broad view of both the gallery opposite and the barn’s central aisle, as far as the gloom allowed. The problem was, of course, that unless something moved out there, I was confronted with only an army of lifeless, empty, oversized shells.

I didn’t think Susan would give herself away; she had chosen this spot, and knew the value of stillness within it. Nor did I intend to move; I’d secured a near perfect observation post. The role of hunter was exclusively Shattuck’s-it was his field to explore and his choice to risk exposure.

Or so I thought.

Far to the left, near the staircase, I saw something move-slightly, with no more urgency that the sweep of a clock’s minute hand. I closed my eyes briefly to intensify their sensitivity to the dark. In the brief moment following their reopening, I saw the figure of a man in profile, shifting with the subtlety of a cloud’s shadow on the moon. He was tall, lean, darkly dressed, his hair close-cropped.

Someone else was here beside Susan, Shattuck, and me. Instinctively, I realized the Outfit had risen to the challenge I had thrown down in Chicago.

Now there were two hunters, one prey, and me.

Never before had I played in a lethal chess game of this kind, where all the players stood apart, unallied, and potentially at risk from one another. I would later recall what happened next only in super-compressed bits of memory-like a series of blurred snapshots taken so close together that the action of one bleeds into the next.

It began with the cellular phone in my pocket going off like an alarm clock. Reaching for my pocket but still frozen to my small observation hole, I saw Shattuck materialize from the gallery opposite me as if from nowhere-a puppet come lethally alive. His legs were slightly apart and braced, his body gently curved, both his arms straight out ahead of him in a perfect shooter’s stance, with his gun aimed straight at me. But the explosion, when it came, was from the left, and the accompanying white-hot muzzle flash revealed the shooter standing as a mirror image of Shattuck, his gun pointing at the first thing he’d seen appear, unintentionally saving my life. Behind him, just over his shoulder, I also saw Susan’s startled white face among the masks on the wall near the stairs.

There was another blinding eruption, from Shattuck’s skewed gun, triggered by the effect of the mobster’s bullet passing through his head. In a second frozen image, I saw him twisted in midair, his eyes wide, his mouth open in surprise, the side of his head ill-defined and blurry, etched in crimson.

The two shots were a split second apart, and my reaction-stimulated by the knowledge that Shattuck had caught the first bullet only because he’d moved first, and that I was next in line-followed almost as fast. Realizing I couldn’t fire my own pistol without the possibility of hitting Susan, I grabbed the center pole beside me, lifted the puppet off the hook on which it was hanging, and running forward, tilted the whole thing like a knight’s lance toward the shooter and threw it.

Now clear of the puppet’s skirts, I saw Shattuck’s killer diving to one side to avoid my missile, just as Susan dropped from the railing around the stairwell to the floor below. I was suddenly faced with a choice: to apprehend a fugitive I’d been after for days or to try to stop a contract killer who would next be gunning for me. After the smallest of hesitations, I chose Susan.

My choice was not as irrational as it first appeared. We were both after Susan Pendergast. If I could keep up with her, the man behind me was sure to follow, giving me, if I was lucky, another chance to deal with him.

Susan had cut right at the bottom of the stairs, into the gloom of the nearest of the three doorways beyond the gift-shop area. I followed, throwing the still-chirping phone to one side as I went, and blundered into her in the middle of a long, almost totally blackened hallway. She shied away from me, lashing out ineffectually with her fists.

“It’s me-Joe Gunther. Goddamn it-cut it out.”

She stopped at hearing my name, and I quickly grabbed her elbow and continued down the passage, which I could barely see was lined by crowds of puppets arranged like those upstairs. These, however, were all human-sized or smaller, since the ceiling was almost perilously low.

“Is there another way out?” I whispered.

I felt Susan shaking her head beside me. “I don’t know.”

We reached the end of the hallway and found a connector passage linking the three parallel galleries that fed into the gift shop. I propelled her into the middle passage and stopped, weighing our slim options, wondering when help would arrive.

Susan tried to shake free of my grasp.

“Stay put,” I growled at her quietly.

“Why? I’m screwed either way.”

“You are if he finds us. Why did you deposit the hundred thousand dollars in the hearse driver’s bank?”

The question startled her, more because of where it was being asked than because of its substance. But it was a question I needed answered-to know, just for myself, the nature of the woman beside me and the extent of her guilt. I was forming a plan, but it risked allowing Billie to escape. I wasn’t going to let that happen if I couldn’t live with the consequences.

“Jesus Christ-I shot the man. It’s the only good use that stupid money’s been put to.” She seemed to understand the debate going on in my head. I felt her hand grip my upper arm in an earnest plea. “I knew if you found me, Shattuck would, too. Destroying David’s skeleton seemed the only way.”

“You killed David, didn’t you?”

She was silent for a moment. I knew that, ironically, the two of us held a momentary advantage over our stalker, who by now was reconnoitering the layout of the gift-shop area. Upstairs, there’d been one way in and out. Here, there were three. As soon as he committed himself to one of the passageways, the other two would be left open as escape routes. He was not going to move precipitously.

“To save Sean’s life,” she finally murmured, her voice seemingly sapped of energy. Despite the crimes she may have committed, I had never overlooked Gail’s high opinion of her or my own first impression when we’d met days ago. Her politics and mine might not have agreed, but her commitment to the welfare of others-including the driver she’d inadvertently wounded-spoke well of her.

But I was to get no more. The luxury of time that our predator’s caution had allowed us vanished with the loud squealing of wood scraping against wood.

Susan stiffened next to me.

“He’s blocking two of the three doors at the other end,” I said. “I expected that.”

From the sounds, I could tell he was leaving the gallery we’d entered open for his approach, so I retraced our steps, speaking as we went. “You need to hide in this passageway-behind the puppets, in case he has a flashlight. Let him pass by, and then run for help. Police should be here soon, but they won’t know where to look.”

It was too dark to read her expression, but I could feel her eyes upon me as she weighed my trust in her against her well-honed instincts for self-preservation.

I gave her shoulder a squeeze, hoping I hadn’t just staked my life on foolish sentiment. “Good luck.” In the dark, I felt her hand touch mine for an instant, and then she was gone.

The shooter had almost finished his handiwork, rearranging the tall, heavy counters in the gift shop in front of the other passageways. The last of his noise allowed Susan to hide herself somewhere down the passage. I waited in the narrow connector to the middle passage, peering around the corner.

The gunman did have a flashlight, held well away from his body so it couldn’t be used as a reliable target in the dark, and he kept switching it on and off to further camouflage his location. Anticipating my scheme, he didn’t proceed slowly and quietly as before, but began ricocheting from side to side, knocking over puppets and props as he went, ensuring that no one would be left hiding in his wake. His progress was now startlingly fast, brutal, and effective.

I had no idea where Susan had hidden herself, or how well. I only hoped that he would miss her in his own attempts to avoid becoming a target. But I also didn’t know how well her nerves would hold up. To remain utterly silent and still, inches away from someone intent on killing you, was a bit much to expect.

Reluctantly, knowing I was reducing whatever plan I might have had to a roll of the dice, I pulled my gun from its holster and aimed at the ceiling above the flickering flashlight. I knew I couldn’t hit him with such a shot, but I also wouldn’t hit Susan by accident.

I pulled the trigger and dove to the side, out of sight. The responding shot was almost instantaneous, slapping into the wooden wall behind where I’d been standing.

I froze for a moment, not knowing if my opponent would stop to take stock or charge to take me off guard. He chose the cautious route, keeping his light off and his movements to a minimum. I felt comfortable now that as long as she stayed put a while longer, Susan could make it to safety.

The light flickered again for a split second as the shooter got his bearings. I retreated farther back into the third gallery and began looking for a good hiding place. I’d done what I could for Susan; now I had to find a way to survive.

The third gallery, like the others, was lined with puppets set in scenes. Moving as quickly as possible, I made my way down its length, to get a feel for the territory. At the far end, there was a grouping of figures dressed in costumes, one of which felt, to my blindly groping fingers, like knitted material. I pulled out my pocketknife again, sliced into the fabric, and pulled at its strands. As I’d hoped, it began to unravel, creating a long, thin string. I tied one end to one of the puppets and retreated with the other back up the gallery, hiding as best I could amid a cluster of figures draped in sheets.

Now it came down to patience, time, and luck. The crowd outside had to be breaking up by now, walking to their cars; the performers were no doubt converging on the house next door to clean up and get ready to head home. The man stalking me knew that. It had occurred to me that perhaps the best way out of my predicament was simply to empty my gun into the floor. But by now, I wanted him as badly as he apparently wanted me.

I stayed against the wall for what seemed like hours, my gun in one hand, the piece of yarn in the other. The gunman had reverted to his earlier technique, where his progress became indistinguishable from the shadows around him. I had no idea which gallery he was prowling, or even, for that matter, if he hadn’t already passed me. I had planned to let him do just that, pulling the string to distract him, thereby getting the drop on him. But that had all depended on knowing where he was. I began to sweat in the total blackness, covered by dusty sheets, my body sore and cramped.

Suddenly, I heard two sounds: one distant, from near the building’s front door; the other far more important to me-a barely perceptible startled intake of breath, not six feet beyond me.

I was about to pull the string in my hand when the blackness around me disappeared in a stunning, blinding brilliance. The barn’s lights had been switched on.

Blinking rapidly, shading my eyes with the hand that had held the now-superfluous piece of yarn, I stepped from my hiding place to face the man who had killed Bob Shattuck.

He was halfway down the passage, his right side to me, similarly surprised but already twisting to get off a shot, when I saw Al Hammond’s face appear beyond him, above the tall counter that had been pushed up against the entrance. He was staring down the sights of a Winchester pump shotgun.

Simultaneously, we both yelled, “Freeze.”

And miraculously, fighting his own momentum with instincts worthy of a cat, the man froze in a half-crouch, his gun almost bearing on my chest.

“Drop it.” There was the hint of a smile then, the man opened his hand, and the gun fell to the floor with a dull clatter.

Outside, ten minutes later, with the side of the old barn flickering in the blue lights of four state police cruisers, I watched as the gunman, handcuffed but outwardly unconcerned, was helped into the back of one of the cars.

A state trooper-the sergeant in command-paused in his interview of me to watch the car drive off. “Cold-blooded son of a bitch, isn’t he?”

I nodded. “How did you know to look in the barn?”

“Some woman came running up as we were checking the crowd, said she’d heard gunshots.”

“She still here?”

“I asked her to stay put, but one of my men just told me she took off. Probably didn’t want to get all tangled up in this.”

I took a deep breath of the fresh night air, wondering where Susan Pendergast was headed now and what would become of her. She was certainly no saint, but if the world let her keep her secrets, she still had much to offer. I knew I’d do my part-she’d gained my respect and my vote for another chance. I’d drop the investigation where it was and let Brandt sort out the public relations.

Unfortunately, Susan would never know that for sure, any more than she’d know whether Bonatto now considered the slate clean or still wanted her dead.

It made me wonder how much longer she’d keep paying the price of freedom, and whether, someday, she’d ever question the value of all her efforts. I hoped, for her sake and for those who stood to benefit from her talents, that she’d keep on fighting.

“I don’t know, Sergeant. Maybe she thought she’d done the best she could.”