Blacklist

CHAPTER 53

It was Catherine, sounding wobbly with fear. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t tell how far away she was or what kind of angle she had. Or what kind of weapon.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said irritably. “Geraldine Graham is with me. Even if you could shoot a hole in me in the dark, Ms. Graham will tell your grandparents and your father, and you’ll have a hell of a time avoiding juvie court, let alone a Washington school. Is Benji here?”

“It’s you!” Her voice quivered with-what, disappointment? rage? “I ordered you to stay away from me!”

“Put a sock in it, Catherine.” I crawled forward, feeling for a chair or something to use as a shield. “I’m not interested in your temper tantrums. Do you imagine yourself as some kind of heroine, living in the north woods on the muskrats you’ll trap? What happens when the crew comes around to get the lodge ready to open-you’ll shoot them, too?”

I bumped into a stool. Behind me, I could hear Geraldine’s slow clumsy step.

“We’ll think of something before then. We have a month. Go away, unless you’ve already told Daddy and Granny where I am.”

As my senses adjusted to the space, I could tell she was above me,

probably on a back staircase, a servants’ staircase, that hadn’t registered in Geraldine’s mind when she was recalling the layout.

“Darlin’, there are no secrets in New Solway. Ms. Graham told me you’d likely be here, where you spent all those golden childhood days with your grandfather. For that same reason, your grandmother has probably guessed you’re here, and I daresay your father may have also. So put away your rifle and come along with me before your folks show up. You don’t want your granny to find you like this, do you? Not with Benji. Let me get you home to your bed, and let me take Benji to Chicago where I can negotiate his safety.”

She began to cry, racking sobs of frustration, exhaustion, adolescence. I heard Benji murmur to her, words too soft for me to make out over her sobs. I moved toward her sobs as fast as I could in the dark. The stairwell opened in front of me suddenly, a blacker black in the dark room. I climbed up, left hand feeling the steep risers in front, right hand keeping hold of my gun, just in case. Fifteen stairs and I touched the metal of the rifle barrel. I grabbed it and pushed it aside. Catherine pulled the trigger.

The noise was overwhelming in that narrow space. The shock from the barrel knocked me off balance. I jammed my spine against the bannister. Below me, Geraldine Graham cried out. Above the whining in my ears, I heard the thud as her body hit the floor and then Benji’s appeal of “Catterine, Catterine, why you are doing this shooting?”

“Turn on the light, one of you.” I snapped.

After a moment, the lights came on in the upper landing. I could see Geraldine lying at the bottom of the stairs. I yanked the rifle out of Catherine’s hand and stomped down the stairs with it. Blood covered Geraldine’s foot and leg and pooled under her.

I slid the safety onto my Smith & Wesson and stuck it in my jacket pocket. In the light coming from the stairwell, I found the kitchen switch. I needed towels, water, soap-a miracle. I rummaged in the drawers, found a stack of dish towels and ran back to the old woman.

As nearly as I could tell, the bullet had grazed the side of her left foot. She might have a broken bone in the instep, but as I probed her leg she didn’t seem to have any other injuries.

I turned the taps in the sink. Water came out; a boiler hissed to life. Catherine said something, but the whining in my ears was still too loud; I couldn’t hear her. As I wrung towels out, she appeared at my side.

“Is she-did I kill her?” “No. You hit her foot.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “I’m so sorry. She-she isn’t moving. You’re sure she isn’t-isn’t dead?”

“She’s unconscious-I hope just from shock, not from hitting her head. I’m wrapping up her foot; you find some ammonia. Look under the sink. If you don’t find any there, hunt for a supply closet. Benji!” I yelled up the stairs. “Bring down blankets.”

I lifted Geraldine’s skirt. She wore old-fashioned nylons attached to a garter belt. I pulled down her stocking and cleaned her leg. I tore a towel in strips and wrapped her foot. Now we had a crippled old woman, a disabled teenager, an Egyptian fugitive. And a detective whose skin was itching from fatigue. I had to stay awake, I had to stay alert enough to get us all out of here and into a place of greater safety. And I had to do it fast.

Benji appeared with two blankets before Catherine found ammonia. I got him to help me wrap Geraldine and to carry her to the living room, where I fumbled one-handed for a light. When I got a lamp switched on, I saw the long wide room was filled with furniture and useless knickknacks. A couch was set against the far wall under a line of windows that overlooked the lake. We lay Geraldine there. As I straightened her legs, I saw one of Kylie Ballantine’s masks hanging by the fireplace.

I ran back to the kitchen, where Catherine was looking ineffectually in drawers. I pulled open a corner door and found a shelf of cleaning supplies. Bleach, furniture polish, bingo-household ammonia! I dashed back to the living room, poured some onto a towel, held it under Geraldine’s nose. She sneezed and twisted her head away from the smell. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Lisa? Lisa-what is going-oh. It’s you, young woman.”

“Yep.” I shut my own eyes briefly, sick with relief that she recognized me. “Do you remember where we are?”

“The cottage. Calvin’s granddaughter. What happened?”

“I fired a twenty-two, Mrs. Graham. I shot you. I never meant to-I’m so sorry.” Catherine appeared under my left shoulder.

“Sweet words don’t make ice cream,” Geraldine snapped. “You’ve caused us all-“

“Yes. A lot of trouble,” I interrupted. “We need to get out of here, Catherine. Really fast. Geraldine-excuse me, ma’am-Ms. Graham, I’m going to leave you here for a minute while I bring Catherine’s Range Rover up to the door. I don’t like to make you travel with this wound, but I think we can lay you flat in the Rover. Benji!”

The youth materialized at the entrance to the living room. “Go upstairs and pull together whatever you brought with you. Catherine, sit down and don’t do anything for two minutes. Don’t cry, don’t run away, don’t shoot anyone.”

She stuck out her lower jaw for a second, then smiled weakly and collapsed obediently in an armchair that faced the lake, nursing her tasted arm on her lap. “Benji and I turned on the propane feed and the water. He knows where the taps are.”

“We won’t bother with those. Just give me your car keys.”

She fished them out of her back jeans pocket. I took them to the kitchen with the used towels. The floor looked as though we’d fought the Battle of the Bulge in here. I wiped up enough of the blood that I wouldn’t be slipping in it when I carried Geraldine out and dumped all the towels in the sink: the caretakers could deal with those when they opened the lodge in May.

I had dropped my briefcase by the back door when I came in-twenty days ago, was it, or only twenty minutes? I put Geraldine’s shoe and nylon in the case and called up the stairs to Benji to hurry up. “I’m going to get the car. You bring everything of yours and Catherine’s downstairs. And then I’ll need you to help me carry Ms. Graham to the car.”

The whining in my ears was dying down. When I went outside, I could hear the wind again, whipping the tree branches around. I slid the barn doors back and started the Range Rover. I’d have to figure out some way, some other time, to come back for Mart’s Saturn.

The Rover’s engine turned over with a roar that made me jump, but, as soon as it caught, it ran so quietly I couldn’t hear it at all. It felt queer to be perched so high above the ground, and it was hard to judge the sides. I inched forward cautiously, not wanting to scrape Mart’s car, nor ram into the barn door.

When I jumped down from the Rover to slide the doors shut behind me, the whining in my ears returned. I shook my head impatiently, trying to clear my ears. The whining got louder. It wasn’t my ears; it was a snowmobile roaring past the lodge and skimming to a halt in front of the cottage door. A compact figure with dark hair in a dark parka jumped off. “Renee!” I shouted above the wind.

She whirled around at my voice. “The detective! I should have expected to find you with my granddaughter. I knew you were lying about the Egyptian boy. You used him to lure my granddaughter from her home, didn’t you?”

“A good story, but don’t run the presses with it just yet,” I yelled.

I was about ten feet from her when she fired. I hit the ground, struggling to get my gun out of my jacket. Before I could shoot, she had opened the cottage door and gone inside.

When I had made it back into the kitchen, I could see Catherine at the bottom of the stairs, Renee above her on the second step.

Catherine was clutching at her grandmother with her sound arm. “No, Granny, nobody forced me to come; it was my idea, not V l.’s, not Benji’s. I kidnapped him, he didn’t force me to do anything.”

“Catherine, they call this the Stockholm syndrome; I’m all too familiar with its effect on people. I’m not surprised, after the week you’ve had, with your injury, and the anesthesia still in your system. Go outside now and wait in the Rover; I’ll be with you directly.”

Catherine turned to me, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, tell her, tell Granny. Benji came with me, he didn’t force me, you didn’t force me! Granny, Granny, it’s all right!” she screamed.

“Catherine, go out to the Rover. You’re in the way in here.” Renee stepped down to point her gun at me. “You! Drop your gun! Now! Kick it under the table!”

I couldn’t risk a shot at her without hitting Catherine. I dropped my gun and kicked it under the kitchen table.

Catherine’s eyes were black holes in her white face. “Granny. You don’t understand. VI. came here to help me. She’s a friend.”

“And you don’t understand, Catherine. You’ve gotten involved in something too big for you right now.”

Catherine ducked under Renee’s arm and ran up the stairs. Her grandmother fired at me, a reckless shot that made me hit the floor. She ran after her granddaughter. By the time I had crawled under the table for my own gun and gotten back on my feet, Renee and Catherine were both at the top of the stairs.

I heard Benji scream, “No, I doing nothing, nothing to Catterine, not touching, you not shoot,” and Catherine shouting, “You mustn’t, you mustn’t shoot him, he’s my friend. Granny, no!” and then the gun sounded again.

I pelted up the stairs, but before I reached the top, Renee appeared in the stairwell head and shot down at me. Plaster fell on me, blinding me, and I flattened myself against the side of the stairwell. Squinting through the plaster dust, I could just make out Renee’s legs and the motion of her hand. I tried a shot. Her legs moved back, but she fired again. Crouching down, hugging the wall, I ran up the stairs, shooting twice to back her away.

Renee’s legs suddenly crumpled. Her gun clattered past me on the stairs. I climbed the last three steps uncertainly. On the upper landing, Geraldine Graham was standing over Renee, the Gabonese mask clutched in her arthritic hands. She was trembling, and blood oozed through the towel on her left foot, but she was smiling grimly.

“Look to the children,” she said.

Benji and Catherine lay in a heap of coats and blood. Flowers of blood spread petals around them. I didn’t know at first which one was wounded, so closely were they entwined, but when I knelt to feel them, Catherine was warm and Benji’s fingers were ice, his pulse a thread. He opened his eyes, said something in Arabic, and then, in English, added, “I seeing Granny before one week. She driving thing like tonight, thing not car, like tonight I seeing from window, she putting man in water.”

“Hush. I know you did. You hush now. Catherine, let go of him, I’m going to carry him downstairs and take him to the hospital.”

I pried her fingers from his cold side. “You bring the coats so we can keep him warm.”

I picked him up, a slight youth, a feather in my arms. “Hold on. You hold on to me, Benji.”

Catherine followed me, leaning against me so she could keep her good hand on Benji’s body. In the kitchen, I kicked Renee’s gun in front of me, tipping it into the snow on my way out. Before we reached the Rover, Benji was dead in my arms.