Bone by Bone

30

A suitcase lay open on the bed, and two more stood by the door. Isabelle slammed a bureau drawer and opened another. "This is because of him, isn't it?" Her hands balled into fists as she turned to her mother. "It always ends like this!"

The hired car would be here any moment-so little time left. Sarah Winston stood by the window, dividing attention between her child and the driveway below. "Belle, you can't stay here and watch over me every minute. I want you to have a life of your own."

Isabelle held a blouse in her hands, absently twisting it into a rope. She dropped it into the open suitcase. Eyes full of tears-finally-for these tantrums always ended with tears, she crossed the room, reaching out to her mother.

Sarah opened her arms to an embrace and kissed her daughter's hair. Turning her eyes to the window, she saw the approaching headlights of the limousine. "The car is here. I'll tell the driver you're almost ready. You'll be back in London soon."

Isabelle would not release her hold. "Don't make me leave. Please, Mom. I won't fight with him anymore. I'll be good."

Sarah held her daughter tightly. So little time-this moment only. Better to be stabbed with a knife, better that than to hear this old refrain from the first time she had sent Isabelle away-and the second time-and the tenth. Both mother and child knew all the words to this ritual parting and how it must end.

"I love you," said Sarah. "It's time for you to go."

The caterer's staff had been sent away and told to return in the morning. The lodge was still dressed in its gala finery. The debris of a thousand guests, their glassware and dishes and even their rented chairs, remained. Only the ice sculptures had been removed, taken outside to melt on the grass.

Addison Winston stood before a glass wall in the tower room. No need for a telescope tonight. He watched the headlights turn into the driveway down on Paulson Lane. The twin beams vanished under the boughs of trees and reappeared at William Swahn's front door. Time was allowed for the man to limp into his house, more time for a slow elevator ride upstairs to the study. There a lamp was switched on in keeping with habits of the past few nights. Addison counted off the usual ten seconds, long enough for Swahn to fetch a pair of binoculars from a desk drawer. And now that distant light was extinguished. Sarah's devoted sentry preferred to keep watch on the tower from a darkened room.

Addison never heard the barefoot steps behind him; he heard the clink of ice cubes in Sarah's glass as she entered the circular room.

The lawyer's smile was in place.

Showtime.

He turned around to face his wife, who seemed startled to find him in her sanctuary at this time of night. "So Belle is gone?"

"Yes." She closed her robe and belted it in an act of modesty, as if they had never been married, never shared a bed. Sarah tilted her head to one side, regarding him as a stranger here in Birdland, this other country at the top of the house. She took a long draught of her whiskey glass, draining it as she sank down in a chair.

"I'm not surprised that Belle left in such a rush." Addison uncapped a bottle he had discovered tucked behind the journals on the bookshelf. He leaned down to pour more whiskey into her glass. "You'll need this. Someone we know has been digging behind the stable." He picked up his wife's hand and kissed it. "Belle found Josh's camera." He stared down at his wife's shattered eyes, and he caressed her face with one hand. "Don't worry. She put it back in the hole and covered it up again. What a good girl. She'd never have done that to protect me."

Sarah shook her head, unable to make sense of this. And then she closed her eyes. She understood.

"That's right," said Addison. "Belle knows you're the one who buried that camera. I can only imagine what's going through her mind right now. Maybe she's thinking that I'm not the only monster in Birdland."

William Swahn held the binoculars to his eyes and watched Addison feed more booze to his wife. This could be construed as the slow poisoning of an alcoholic, nothing as graphic as battering, but just as deadly. Sarah was clearly pained by something her husband was saying.

William did not underestimate the killing power of words.

The telephone rang, and he knew who the caller would be before he picked up the receiver. "Hello, Belle… Are you crying?… Yes, I'm watching her now."

By their poor connection, he realized that Isabelle was calling from a cell phone, and that would place her well outside the town. "Where are you?… You're leaving?… What about the maid? Is she still in the house?"

The call ended in the middle of a word, and he guessed that Belle's cell phone had failed her in this corner of the world where wireless lines of communication were hit and miss.

He resumed his watch on the tower room. Though he disliked the idea of spying, a promise was a promise. He had never been able to say no to Isabelle.

Sarah was more pliant when she was drunk, and Addison almost preferred her this way. When he took her hand, she obediently rose from the chair. How he loved her-he loved her to death. He led her to the sliding door that opened onto the deck.

The night was warm and all the winged rats had gone to sleep-so quiet now, only the soft applause of leaves slapping one another as the wind rushed through them. Man and wife were about to pass through the open door when Addison turned to the opposite wall of glass and smiled for his audience, the watcher in the dark. He waved.

William Swahn was startled-a voyeur caught in the act. He watched Addison kiss his wife. It appeared that the man was sucking air and life from Sarah's body. She went limp and staggered onto the deck, supported by her husband's arm about her waist. The two of them disappeared behind a solid portion of the circular wall.

This stroll in the sky would certainly make their watcher anxious, and so Addison was slow to lead his wife around to that part of the deck that could be seen from Swahn's window. The lawyer, a showman and consummate actor, delighted in dragging out the other man's tension. As they walked, he said to Sarah, "I saw you bury the camera… and the Hobbs boy."

She stopped, but failed to make a stand.

He led her onward, for they could not keep Swahn in suspense all night. Around the deck they went, and now they were in full view of the house on Paulson Lane. It was time to jack up the fear in Sarah's eyes. "When I borrowed one of your journals-I needed the sketches for the ice sculptors to copy-I couldn't help but notice that some of them were missing from the shelf. They covered the year when Josh died. Did Belle take them with her by any chance?"

"No." Sarah turned her head toward the ocean view, perhaps looking there for inspiration. And she found it. Her eyes were too bright when she turned back to him, saying, "I threw those books into the sea."

"Excellent." Did he believe her? Of course not. But he had read every one of her birder logs and pronounced them all insanely delusional. "So you just tossed them off a cliff. Now why couldn't you have done that with Josh's camera? Why drag it home and bury it behind the stable? What were you thinking?"

Was that the day your mind snapped?

Easier to recall that night when he had lain awake, waiting for his wife to come to bed. He remembered the sliver of light under their bedroom door. He had seen the shadows of her footsteps pausing there, then moving on to make her bed elsewhere.

Dating back to early days at eastern boarding schools, Isabelle Winston had spent most of her life grieving over a death that had not happened yet. And tonight she was still longing for a ghost mother who had not yet-not entirely-died.

The limousine driver pulled into the local airport. The commuter plane could be seen near the small building that passed for a terminal. Soon the aircraft would be loading passengers bound for San Francisco and connecting red-eye flights to points all over the world.

The ticket to ride was in her hand.

Every time she left her mother, all but pushed out the door, Isabelle felt the same sense of fear; it always escalated to panic when she saw these airport lights. And each time she had reached a distant shore, all she had ever wanted was to go home again.

A lifetime of longing.

Enough.

She leaned toward the driver and said, "Take me back!"

Addison took Sarah's hand and twirled her in the turn of a waltz step until she was dizzy and in danger of falling. "I know you still have that photograph of you and Swahn." She could only stare at him.

He prompted her recall. "It's been a while-more than a quarter of a century The picture was taken back in LA-at a graduation ceremony for police cadets."

Sarah nodded. "I ordered that print from the photographer. When it came in the mail, I showed it to you. And you knew I was going-"

"To see an old friend. So you said. The boy in that photograph was barely twenty-one-hardly an old friend, Sarah."

He held her at arm's length, and together they whirled around the deck, faster and faster, in and out of the sights of Swahn's binoculars. They stopped once again to stand on that portion of the deck overlooking Paulson Lane. Still in the dancing mode, Addison dipped his partner over the rail, her long hair dangling, her face contorted in fear. He turned his head to smile for the man who sat in the dark.

"Yes!" William Swahn yelled at the civilian aide who had answered the phone at the sheriff's office. "Yes, it's a damned emergency!"

"I don't think I like your tone." The girl's voice was painfully young and slightly bruised. "Why didn't you call nine-one-one?"

"The operator would've sent a deputy from Saulburg. The sheriff's house is right here in Coventry." But Cable Babitt's home telephone was unlisted. "You have to call him and-"

"What is the nature of the emergency?"

Oh, bloody Christ. He imagined her reading lines from a script. He gripped the telephone receiver tighter, and he was calmer when he said, "Call the sheriff's house. Tell him I think Ad Winston is going to murder his wife."

"You think he's gonna-" The girl paused for a second or two. There was sarcasm in her voice, a touch of payback when she said, "So no one's been injured. You just think somebody might kill his wife."

William yelled, "Tell him!"

"You kept that photograph all these years," said Addison Winston.

Sarah turned away from her husband and gripped the rail, off balanced by dancing and liquor, dizzy and sick. "I told you about the graduation ceremony. I always told you about every hour of my day-where I went, who I spoke to."

Behind his wife's back, ever mindful of their audience, Addison mimed the act of stabbing Sarah with a knife. For his next performance piece, he left her standing at the rail, holding on tight. He flattened up against the glass wall, and then, with both hands raised, as if to push her off the deck, he rushed forward, stopping short of touching her back. He lowered his hands and laughed out loud, imagining that he could hear Swahn screaming in the distance-in the dark.

Yet his voice was tender as he stood behind Sarah, holding her by the shoulders and nuzzling the soft skin of her neck. "I know you kept one of his letters, too."

She turned around to face him, uncomprehending. "What letters? There was only-"

"Only one left. I know. I suppose you burned the others, but this one was special. Every now and then, I dig it out of your keepsake box and read it again. All these years later, I still find it very powerful. I can understand why you kept that one."

He stepped back a pace to regard his wife. So this was what a stunned cow looked like after it had been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat-the prelude to slaughter.

Taking Sarah in his arms, Addison danced her past the open door. Her bedside telephone rang, and the answering machine played a message from a man in deep distress, an anguished paramour pleading for Sarah to come indoors. "Hold on!" Swahn yelled from the little box. "I'm coming! I'm on the way!" On this note of hysteria, the call ended.

Perfect.

William Swahn stepped out of the elevator cage and crossed the room to another telephone for one more call. Once he reached the lodge, he would be helpless. Its grand staircase was insurmountable for a man with a ruined leg that could not support him in a climb to anywhere.

His mere presence in the house might be enough to end the madness, but he could not count on that. William made a call for help from another quarter, spending precious seconds to listen to a tape recording telling him that there was no one there to hear him, no one home. He left a message and then limped toward his front door. Haste caused him pain.

His pills were upstairs on the desk in his study. No time to get them.

He left the house hobbling, aching.

Addison held her very close. "I followed you the night you dug up the boy's skull. Why did you have to do that? Guilt, Sarah? After all these years? Everything was going so well. But now you and Swahn are becoming more unstable every day. He's putting it all together. If he doesn't know already, he'll figure out that you were the cause of his mutilation. Well, you can see what you've done."

Sarah was looking down at the headlights rushing along Paulson Lane.

"He's coming," said Addison. "Almost here." He wrapped both her hands around the deck rail. "Don't go anywhere without me." He gently turned her face to his and softly kissed her lips. "I'd love to stay and dance all night, but I have to go downstairs and greet our guest."

Father and son walked up the driveway, and the yellow stray trotted ahead of them. Henry Hobbs was in good spirits and slightly tipsy when he tossed another stick, and the dog fetched it back. "Remember doing this with old Horatio?"

"Yeah," said Oren. "Those sticks kept whizzing past him. He never figured out what they were for."

The judge's happiness was complete. Fine wine and a warm summer night-these things were truly gifts, and best of all was a walk down a country road with his son. He held his watch up to the light of the porch and squinted at the dial. "Hannah should've been home by now. I'd better go inside and check the answering machine."

"Give her a little more time." Oren leaned down to scratch the stray dog behind the ears. "She must've been the designated driver for half the town tonight."

"Well, Hannah does love to drive."

"Odd that she never got a driver's license… but she'd have to produce a birth certificate to get one." Oren stood with his back to the porch, taking advantage of deep shadow to conceal his face. The judge was exposed, lit by a yellow bug light glowing brightly.

Oren sat down on the bottom step. "You still pay her wages in cash, right? I always wondered where Hannah kept her money. I know she can't put it in the bank. She'd need a Social Security number to open an account."

This posed an unsettling problem. There were rules to be observed, and Oren was breaking them with impunity. Henry Hobbs had invented this game to teach his boys the art of conversation, instructing them not to trivialize it by injection of the obvious. Oren was taking the contest to a new level, using lost points for bait.

The judge threw up his hands, feigning confusion and misunderstanding. "Don't you worry about Hannah. She's well provided for in my will."

He clapped his son on the back as he moved past him to climb the porch stairs.

Turnabout.

Now it was Oren's face that was bathed in light, and there was grave suspicion there. "Without any kind of identification, I wonder how she's going to prove that she's Hannah Rice-so she can collect from your estate."

Henry Hobbs forced a smile. "You're my executor, boy. You won't have any problem identifying her."

"Won't I? I don't even know if Hannah's her right name-and neither do you."

In his haste-as much haste as a cripple could manage-the late-night visitor dispensed with the custom of knocking. The great oak door to the lodge swung open, and the man entered the foyer walking ungainly, almost comic with his awkward limp.

Addison paused half the way down the staircase to lean against the banister. "Good evening… again."

Swahn advanced on him, hobbling, listing to one side, and every step threatened to tip him over. He came to a halt at the bottom of the staircase. "Where is Sarah?"

"William, my wife is too tired for any more entertaining tonight. I'll give her your regards."

Swahn shouted, "Sarah, I'm here!"

"Stop!" Addison held up one hand in the manner of a traffic cop. "Keep your voice down. My wife is quite drunk. I don't think she could handle these stairs any better than you. We don't want her to fall and break her neck, do we?"

Swahn placed one foot on the bottom step. The weight on his bad leg caused a wince of pain. He was slow to gain the next step, and the next.

"Well, I can see this might take a while." Addison danced past him down the stairs. There was time enough to enter the front room and fill two glasses at the caterer's bar. When he returned to the foyer, Swahn had fallen. Reduced to crawling, he had abandoned his cane to drag himself up four more steps.

"Good job," said the lawyer. "Only forty to go." He bent down and offered Swahn one of the glasses, but he was rebuffed. "No? None for you? Ah, well." He settled one champagne flute on the carpet beside the crawling man. "Just in case you get thirsty."

Six steps above his guest, Addison sat down to watch the man's slow, painful progress. "I can see that you're still totally preoccupied with my wife. Have you figured out Sarah's part in the death of Joshua Hobbs?"

Swahn's brow was beaded with the sweat of exertion. He gave up his struggle and laid his head on one arm. "That's insane."

Addison tipped back his glass, then wiped his lips. "I know you met with Sarah in the woods every Saturday at precisely twelve noon."

"That never happened."

"Don't interrupt." Addison lightly stepped down the staircase to retrieve the cane that had been left behind as dead weight. He raised it over his head and brought it down on the man's back. Swahn moaned.

The lawyer resumed his smile, always a gracious host. "I even know where the two of you met. With a telescope, I could always find Sarah's car on that bald section of the mountain. Of course, she knew I'd be watching, but you were cagey, William. You must've parked your own car under the trees-that turnout close to the clearing-easier to hobble into the woods from there."

"You're deluded."

This time, Addison had only to raise the cane, and his well-trained guest fell silent.

"One day, I decided to catch Sarah in the act. Hours before my wife left the house, I set out on foot. I took the old hikers' trail. Not far past Evelyn's cabin-that's where the bodies were. I had no use for the woman's corpse, but that dead boy was a gift. Sad, really. Poor Sarah had so few friends- just you and her little protégé, the fledgling photographer."

"You killed Josh?"

"That has nothing to do with my story." Addison brought the cane down on Swahn's hand. The blow was hard enough to break the skin and, hopefully, a few bones as well, but the man did not cry out.

A small disappointment.

"Pay attention, William. I dragged the boy's corpse up the trail to the clearing, and then I went to work on his face with a pocketknife. Sarah and I had a lack of communication in those days. So this was how I talked to my wife, through mutilation."

"Like mine?" Swahn raised himself up to lean upon one arm, and his fingers lightly grazed his old scar. "The woman they found in Josh's grave-was that the missing dispatcher from LA? Is that why you-"

"Oh, no, no, no." Addison shook his head in an exaggerated loss of patience. "You're muddling my crimes. Why would I kill the dispatcher? She had no idea where her bribe money came from. Her only job that night was diverting you to a surprise party-during a tour of duty-an insignificant crime. When you called in for backup and the dispatcher heard the shots and screams-that's when she realized what kind of a party it was. And she ran away. I'm told she didn't even finish out her shift."

"The dispatcher never called for help? She was the one who left me to die?"

"Yes. I couldn't have planned for that to happen. However, I am a creature of opportunity. Shame to waste the makings of a good lawsuit. But that woman I found with Josh-well, I have no idea who she was. And who cares?" He raised the cane and punctuated the beats of an admonition with strikes to Swahn's shoulders and his head. "She has nothing to do with my story."

Addison tossed his hair and tilted his head to one side. "Where was I? Oh, yes. I was carving up the face of a dead child. And then I found myself a good hiding place in the trees. I wish you could've seen Sarah's expression when she walked into the clearing and found Josh lying there. It was marvelous-insane, yet sympathetic, too. She screamed. She wept. I wondered if she would recognize my handwriting in that bloody scar I carved into the boy's skin. It was an A just like yours."

A cut above Swahn's eye half blinded him, drops falling to the carpet as if he cried blood tears. The unobscured eye had the glaze of shock. But the man was paying attention.

Addison continued. "She started digging his grave. That surprised me. I thought she'd run-but no. Sarah knelt down beside the boy and tried to scratch out a grave with her bare hands. Well, eventually, she came to her senses and gave up on that idea. She went home and came back with a shovel. Much more practical for grave-digging. I assume she met you on the road and warned you off."

"I was never there."

This time, Addison rained blows on the man's damaged leg, saying all the while, so calmly, "It's-rude-to-inter-rupt."

Swahn cried out.

So satisfying.

Sarah Winston stared at the flagstones of the terrace below. Her grip on the rail was tenuous.

She looked up to the sky, asking heavenly bodies if she should stay or go. She interpreted the blinks and winks of planets and the ponderous movements of stars. Yes, they were all in agreement. It was time to leave the earth.

"The grave Sarah dug was much too shallow," said Addison. "I came back later and dug a deeper hole, a wider one-so I could bury the woman's body, too. When I was done, you couldn't tell there'd been any digging at all. I scattered the excess dirt so as not to leave an obvious mound. And I spread leaves to complete my camouflage. One last touch-and this is delicious. I left Josh's camera to mark the grave for Sarah. I knew she'd come back. How I wish I could've seen her face when she found that camera. It must've driven her wild."

"You can't kill Sarah. She's an innocent."

"It doesn't look that way. I'm speaking as a lawyer now. She tried to hide the evidence of a murder, and I think we both know why. Given that big bloody A carved into the boy's face, the sheriff would've knocked on your door first. Cable Babitt's a plodding dolt, but he could hardly miss that connection." Addison leaned in close. "She must've loved you very much. And now I need to hear your confession." He looked toward the ceiling, as if he could see through it to the tower room above. "I don't think poor Sarah's up to it. I want every detail of your affair with my wife."

"She was my friend," said William. "I never touched her."

"Liar."

A small voice called down to them, "It's true." Sarah stood at the top of the stairs. Her words were faint, and both men strained to hear her. She looked down at her husband's upturned grinning face. "Mavis Hardy was the one I met in the woods every Saturday, when she closed the library for lunch. We went birding together. You didn't want me to have any friends… so I never mentioned her. But after I saw what you'd done to Josh…" Her voice trailed off to whispers, and she spoke to the air above their heads. "Bad things happen to my friends, so I stopped seeing Mavis… And how could I ever face William again?"

She could not face him now. Her eyes were vacant, seeing nothing. Sarah was gone even before she turned around and left him lying there. William stretched out one hand, as if he could reach her that way. He struggled to climb the next step. "She's going back to the tower. Addison, stop her. She's in a dangerous state of mind."

"Stop her?" The lawyer pressed one hand to his breast in mock surprise. "Don't you believe that the bird queen can fly?" He fished his wallet from a back pocket. "Ah, well, maybe you're right. She might need a little help, a gentle nudge in the right direction. But can she fly? That's the question." He opened the wallet and pulled out a bill. "I've got twenty dollars here that says she drops like a stone."

"She never cheated on you, Addison."

"Lies." He laid down the cane to pull a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket. "I've got the proof-one of your old love letters." The paper was falling apart in the creases, having been read too many times by a madman. He opened it and held it up and pointed to the bottom line. "That's your signature."

Hannah rolled up the driveway and parked in front of the house. Stepping out of the car, she said to the judge, "The engine's sputtering some. Maybe we should have it looked at."

"Here's an idea," said Oren, with the mildest sarcasm. "Why don't you guys buy a new car?"

"I suppose it's time," said the judge. "But you know this old Mercedes runs fine. It's probably just low on gas." He turned to Hannah. "That's what happens when you spend the night playing taxi driver for every drunken man, woman and child in Coventry."

She marched up the stairs and into the house. The screen door slammed behind her, a message to tell him that she was in no mood for criticism tonight.

The judge called after her, "We'll get a new car, all right? We'll get two new cars."

"I called the sheriff's office," said William Swahn.

"And they laughed at you, right? You told them you saw a man dance with his wife? Something like that?" Addison Winston tapped his temple with one finger to illustrate a mind at work. "I anticipated you." Theatrically, he cupped his ears with both hands. "Do I hear sirens in the distance?" He lowered his hands. "No, I'm afraid not."

"I made another call."

Isabelle's limousine was headed homeward, but only moving at the legal limit. She renewed her quarrel with the chauffer. "Yes, you can go faster. It's late, and all the state troopers are asleep by the side of the road. I promise you won't get a ticket." She reached through the opening in the glass partition and emptied her wallet on the front seat beside the driver.

The limousine sped up, but not fast enough, and she had no more money to buy another twenty miles per hour.

The screen door was pushed open so hard it banged against the porch wall, and Hannah came flying out. "Mr. Swahn left a message on the answering machine. There's trouble at the Winston lodge. No idea when he called, but he said to come quick."

Oren snatched the keys from her outstretched hand. When he slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes, the engine would not turn over.

"I misspoke." The judge turned to Hannah. "The car's not low on gas-it's out of gas."

Oren never heard this remark. He was running down the driveway.

"Ah, William. Intrepid fellow." Addison slowly climbed the stairs beside the crawling man, grinning with encouragement, pausing to beat him with the cane every now and then when he thought his guest's attention might be flagging.

"Great joke on me, isn't it?" The cane rose again and came down. "It just keeps getting funnier and funnier."

Swahn rolled onto his side, shot through and through with pain. "You can't get away with this."

"Of course I can. My wife has a history of slashed wrists and sleeping pills. And you're going to shoot yourself." Addison sat down on the steps, a brief respite from his labors-the heavy work of inflicting agony. "There's only one conclusion that our idiot sheriff will draw-that old cliché of unrequited love. If you can't have my wife, then no man can. So you pushed her off the deck and then-Oh, allow me one more cliché. You're going to eat your gun. That's the time-honored method for an ex-cop's suicide. I thought you'd like that part-a cop to the end- literally."

Addison wagged one finger at Swahn. "Don't tell me. I know what you're thinking. Those bruises on your body. They'll be blamed on the mob, all those flying bottles and rocks. And the cuts-the blood from your open wounds? Well, of course I tried valiantly to defend my wife, but then you pulled a gun." He reached behind his back and under his coattails to retrieve a revolver from his waistband. "Unregistered, untraceable. Finest kind. And they say nothing good can come of consorting with criminals." He took a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the surface. "Your prints will be the only ones found. And I have all the proof I need to back up my version of events." He waved the yellowed sheet of paper. "Your love letter to Sarah."

The lawyer laid the weapon on a step beyond Swahn's reach. "The revolver has to be in your hands when it goes off-just in case the sheriff remembers to test for residue from gunfire. This works best if you're unconscious when I put the barrel in your mouth. So you'll understand why I have to put you to sleep." He picked up the cane and raised it high for another strike. "Good night, William."

"That letter's going to destroy you. Any document expert can use it against you."

The cane stopped mid-swing. "I hardly think so. It's your handwriting. And the wording-so obsessive. Psychotic, I'd say. Love is insane, isn't it?"

"But I only wrote one letter to Sarah. It was the year she left school to marry you. She was twenty-four, a grown woman. I was barely fourteen years old." With his bloodied right hand, he pointed to the letter. "That's only the lovesick ramblings of a child."

Conviction was lacking in Addison 's voice when he said, "You'd say anything to-"

"I was only her friend." Swahn rested his head on the stairs and left blood there from his wounds. "It would never occur to her that I killed the boy You heard what she said-bad things happen to her friends. Sarah's own words." He touched the scar on his face. "When she saw this A carved into Josh… that's when she knew you were the one who did this to me."

The cane dropped from Addison 's hand. He felt a constriction within, a vise that gripped his heart. From without, an invisible force was bearing down on his chest, pressing, pressing.

"I think she knew you were crazy long before that," said Swahn. "She was sending Belle away to boarding school years before Josh died. She did her best to keep her child away from you. But Sarah could never leave you."

Addison sank down on the stairs and gasped for air.

"I was at your wedding." Swahn dragged himself up one more step. "You might remember me as the pimple-faced little boy in the first pew. I'll tell you what I remember-the vows, old ones, so traditional. She vowed to stand by you 'in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.' So she sent her child away because she was afraid for Belle. But Sarah stayed. Crazy as you are, she stayed to keep you company… and she even went insane with you." Swahn gripped the staircase carpet and dragged one useless leg behind him as he climbed the steps. "She buried Josh's body to protect you. She did it for love."

Addison leaned back against the banister.

So hard to breathe.

Pain radiated outward from his heart, traveling upward to his neck and his jaw. Soon the nausea would be upon him; he knew all the symptoms. Bile was rising in his throat. His face wet with cold sweat.

Swahn was impervious to all these signs as he dragged his ruined body upward. The man's face was turned toward the next flight of steps, the next round of agony that would lead him to the tower room.

Only Addison saw Sarah's body falling past the window. His wife did not cry out. It was Addison who screamed-or thought he did. His mouth opened wide, but he could only manage a hoarse whisper of her name. For one insane moment, he believed that he could call Sarah back before she fell to earth.

Would that she could fly.

Oren pushed open the front door and entered the foyer. Addison Winston sat alone on the staircase, tie undone and clutching the breast of his dress shirt. His face was ashen. The lawyer was orating to no one. His mouth only moved in dumb show.

Using the telephone in the foyer, Oren called for an ambulance. "It's a heart attack," he said, last words, as he hung up on the 9-1-1 operator. Joining Addison on the stairs, he picked up the gun on the step behind the man. And then he saw William Swahn's cane. There was blood on the silver handle, but none on the lawyer.

The lawyer's gun in one hand and the cane in the other, he traveled up the stairs to the second-floor landing, following a trail of small bloody dots and long smears. Swahn had collapsed on a second staircase, a narrow one. Oren laid down the cane, freeing one hand to roll the man over and check for a pulse. It was there, weak and thready.

Swahn's eyes opened.

"Ad Winston did this to you?"

"I have to get to Sarah." Swahn pointed to the top of the narrow staircase, and then his hand dropped. His eyes closed.

Oren climbed the stairs to enter a circular room, where he found a shattered cocktail glass and melting ice cubes on the floor, but no sign of Mrs. Winston. A smashed answering machine lay on a rug beside the bed. He passed through an open glass door and crossed the outside deck to look over the rail. Her body lay sprawled on the terrace below, and a blood pool spread around her head.

"Sarah," said Swahn, weak and whispery, as Oren walked past him on the stairs. "I promised to-"

"Lie still," said Oren, though he doubted that this man would ever move again. "An ambulance is coming."

He ran down the stairs, skipping every second step, passing by the lawyer, who was laughing at some private joke that he had told himself. Oren sprinted across the front room and rounded the line of potted trees that hid the terrace doors. He opened them wide, and there she lay, animated by the wind lifting long strands of pale hair and playing with them, but the former soldier could not be fooled.

He would know death anywhere.

This time, the journey was longer as he made his way back up to the top of the lodge. The fallen man was no longer lying on the tower staircase. He had underestimated Swahn's mission to get to Mrs. Winston. There was no one inside the circular room. Once again, Oren stepped out onto the deck, and there lay the cane.

The man was gone.

The corpses were in body bags when the coroner's team carried them from the back terrace to the front of the lodge. They were laid on the ground side by side. This strange reunion of Swahn and Mrs. Winston was the first thing Addison saw when his gurney was carried out the door.

The circular driveway was choked with police vehicles, and a path was being cleared for the imminent flight of the ambulance. Its lights were spinning and the engine running. The rear doors hung open, awaiting the coronary patient.

A civilian vehicle was parked a short distance away. Hannah sat in the backseat of the limousine, breaking the sorry news to Mrs. Winston's daughter. As if by explosion, the car door flew open, and Isabelle touched ground at a dead run, aiming her body like a bullet and streaking up the driveway toward the gurney that held Addison Winston. The lawyer wore a maddening grin as he lifted one hand to wave to her.

Though the redhead was slender, one burly deputy was not up to the job of thwarting her forward momentum. She was only slowed down a bit when she stopped to send her knee into the man's crotch.

On the other side of the yard, Oren winced in sympathy and wisely elected to stay out of her way.

Isabelle's assault on the deputy bought Hannah time to close the distance, and now she stopped the younger woman with only one leaf-light hand and a few low-spoken words that did not carry. By some trick of flashing ambulance lights and body language, tiny Hannah seemed to grow larger in Oren's eyes, and Isabelle became smaller and smaller, shrinking to the ground in tears. The housekeeper's arms enfolded her, and Oren moved closer to hear Hannah say, "Patience, child. It won't take long."

One of the paramedics left the ambulance and ran to the sheriff. The coronary patient, earlier pronounced stable for transport, was now dead.

Spooky Hannah.

And there was no question of bringing Ad Winston back to life. The medic held one hand pressed to his own heart, illustrating his story of a body part broken beyond repair. "The second attack hit him like a bolt of lightning. The guy had to be in agony, but I swear he was laughing when he died. Weird, huh? Like he thought the pain was just so damn funny."

Cable Babitt was beyond the reach of his jeep radio, though he could hear the faint static of chatter behind him. By flashlight, he made his way to the grave at the center of the clearing. The crime-scene tape had been removed, and the hole had been filled in. He dropped the large plastic bag at his feet, needing both hands for the digging. When he steeped his shovel into the earth, he was blinded by a brilliant flash of light.

Sally Polk's voice came out of the darkness. "Can we take that picture again? I think you moved."

The next photograph caught him with one hand protecting his eyes.

Flashlights clicked on to illuminate two of the largest state troopers Cable had ever seen. Or maybe it was his fear that made them into giants. One of them relieved him of the shovel, and he heard the metallic click of locks as the other one cuffed his hands behind his back.

Sally Polk was still wearing her party dress, but she had traded her high heels for hiking boots. She bent down to pick up the plastic bag and opened it to pull out a bundle of canvas. "What a coincidence. It's the same color as my dress. Bright green. Cable, isn't that how you described it in that old missing-person report?" She placed one arm around his shoulders to pose for a photograph with her trophy suspect. "Well, Josh's knapsack gets around, doesn't it? First your toolshed, then the woodpile. Oh, and thank you so much for moving it off your property. I don't think there's a judge in this county who would've given me a search warrant for your place."

"I know this looks bad," said Cable.

"Bad or stupid-one of those things." Sally Polk said this without much conviction for either case. She held up the green knapsack. "You couldn't just throw it away, could you? No, you had to keep a souvenir."