Distant Blood

24

I crouched in the stairway, listening. Above the lashing cry of the storm the only regular sound was the intense drum of my heartbeat.

Another gunshot erupted. I hugged against the wall.

You see, I've been shot before. I know the lancing agony of a bullet ripping through skin and muscle, the heat of it kissing your bone, the blind pain that defies imagination. Terror welled up in me like black blood from a deep wound. My breath rattled in my chest.

A voice from above whispered harshly, “Son?”

Pop. I grimaced. “Pop! Go back upstairs. Stay with the others!”

“No, I won't. I ain't gonna let you go down there-”

“Listen.” I nimbly ascended a few steps to where I could see his outline, crouching in the heavy blackness of the hallway. “One of us has to go. I'll go. I think the shooting's over. No one's screaming, so maybe no one's hurt.” I believe this technique is called clutching at straws. But I didn't share that thought with Pop. I shoved the gun toward his hands in the darkness. “Is there a cartridge for this up here?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. Mutt always kept all the guns in his study.” Pop's voice was strained, pleading. “Jordan, just stay up here. With us.”

“Listen. I'll be back in a minute. Please. Go back.”

“Stubborn, just like your mama.”

I didn't argue this time. He turned and headed back toward Candace's room. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Silence fell. I imagined Philip lying wounded, or dead, on the study floor, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the hole in his skin. And I'd let him go down there alone.

Whoever was down there shooting, he or she had been the one to hurt Candace. To kill my child. I blew out the candle and closed my eyes for a brief prayer.

Then I rushed down the stairs, my hands aching for a throat. The study doors stood half-closed, and I heard only silence within.

Slowly I pushed back the door, keeping my head low. The other study doors stood open onto the porch, wind and rain rattling in, soaking the floor. The air felt oppressive with the weight of the storm. The room was a shambles, as though a fight had torn it apart. I crept in, keeping my back against the door, breathing softly through my mouth, listening for any telltale sign that I wasn't alone.

Lightning cascaded its eerie flash into the bay, and the room lit dimly. And I could see the body lying on the floor, folded over the end of the rug.

I scurried forward, my fingers trembling as I fired the match and lit the candle. Light spilled out in an eldritch glow, and I stared down into the vacant, dead eyes of Rufus Beaulac.

The bullet had smashed through his throat, and his hand lay limply near the terrible wound, as though he needed simply to cough and all would be well. Blood-maroon in this uncertain light-speckled his face, his chest, his twisted lips, the floor. I held my fingers above his mouth. No breath stirred against my skin.

“Oh, my lord,” a voice not my own murmured, and I nearly screamed. I jerked the light up-Uncle Jake sat huddled in his chair, his face as frightened as a child's. His hands were clasped in the fold of his robe and he shivered in the dampness gusting in from the door. He blinked at me as if he didn't quite know me. “Jordan. Oh, dear. Something's wrong with Rufus. You better fetch Deb, he's-”

“He's dead, Uncle Jake. Are you okay?” I felt a sudden, sharp fear that with his heart condition, tonight would bring on an attack. “Where are the others?”

Puzzlement clouded his usually acerbic face. “I'm fine.

They-they're outside. Mutt and Philip argued about opening the safe, and taking the boat-” He pointed toward the wall safe, exposed now because the reproduction battle flag covering it lay on the floor. The safe door was open like a dark eye.

The boat? My heart pounded. I hurried to the study doors and out into the storm. Rain smashed into my face like a hard slap. The sky frothed with violence. Dark, cancerous clouds pummeled each other, lightning leaping from them to earth in obscene caresses. In seconds, I was drenched to the skin. I shaded my hands against the wind and the rain, trying to make out the stretch of terrain from the house to the dock. I stumbled forward, past the dark shape of the greenhouse, into the blackness of the night.

I had gotten to the beach-the ill-fated beach that gave this island its terrible name. For a moment, in the glassiness of vision in unrelenting rain, I thought I saw the shadows of a dozen boys, lying in the sand in their tattered uniforms, throats laid open like Rufus's. I gagged and yelled out. But there were no boys, there was only a dark shape lying on the beach, facedown in the wet sand. I stumbled forward and pulled on a shoulder, heaving him over.

Philip. I screamed out his name and leaned close to him. Ragged breath hit my ear. I felt up and down his head, his body, trying to see what was wrong. Sand daubed in a wound on his head. I had to wait for a flicker of lightning to see it'd been creased by a bullet. I yelled his name again, but he didn't answer.

Lights flicked on, out on the water. The boat. I ran toward it, the wind slamming into me, screaming out at Uncle Mutt.

Waves rocked the small boat. In the pale gleam of its running lights, I saw Wendy hurriedly donning a life preserver. And I could see Mutt's second boat, Little Brutus, its lines cut, bouncing in the pounding waves. Unreachable.

“Don't leave us! Don't leave us here, you asshole!” I hollered into the wind. “You murderer! Murderer!”

I couldn't see them clearly; the rain cut at my eyes like talons. Their boat bobbed in the hard swells, bumped against the dock, and turned out toward the bay.

Now I was on the dock, arms flailing, trying to keep my balance in the violent gale. A wave struck their boat, it rocked. And began moving away.

“Don't! Don't!” I screamed. If they ever heard me, there was no indication.

The dock jolted and tottered under my feet. I turned away from the fleeing vessel and hurried back to Philip. He still wasn't conscious and I slowly pulled him up into a fireman's carry, hoping I wasn't hurting him worse if he had suffered injuries I hadn't detected.

Halfway back to the house, Tom and Pop found me. Pop seized me in a grateful hug, nearly making me drop Philip. They eased him from my shoulders (he was not light) and we headed toward the house.

I came up after them onto the porch, staggering with delayed shock. I steadied Philip's back as Pop and Tom carried him in between them. I stumbled as we headed onto the porch, and my hand smashed through one of the panes of glass in the study door, cutting it deeply. I yowled as warm blood gushed over my hand.

“Oh, Christ,” I muttered.

Jake still sat in the study, watching us with wide eyes. He looked like a little boy on a too-scary adventure. “What's happened?” he cried.

“Mutt-or Wendy-shot Philip. The bullet creased his head,” I managed to gasp. “They've left us. They've taken one of the boats and cut loose the other.”

Jake got to his feet with more alacrity than I'd have given him credit for. His eyes were bright furnaces of shock. “The phones are still out,” he said. “I just tried a minute ago-”

“Get Philip on the settee,” Pop gasped. “Tom, hurry. Get Deborah down here.” They lowered Philip down to the sofa and Tom sprinted up the stairs. In the dim light of my candle, which Jake had kept lit, Philip's wound didn't appear so grave-more of a deep bruise and a nasty laceration. It was clear the bullet hadn't penetrated his skull. But he was shockingly pale, and I started cleaning the clumped sand from around his face.

“Oh, Jordy, your hand,” Pop muttered. “I'll take care of Philip. That's a bad cut. Gonna need stitches. We got to get Deborah to look at it.”

“It'll keep,” I answered. “Oh, shit, Pop, Mutt did all this. That bastard-”

Deborah and Gretchen barreled down the stairs with Tom. Gretchen let out a little shriek at the sight of Rufus's body. Deb paused at Rufus, but saw he was dead. She pushed us out of the way to examine Philip. She began issuing orders to the others.

“Come here, Jordan,” Jake called. “Let Philip be. Deb'll take good care of him. Let me tend to that cut.”

“Go ahead, Jordy,” Pop ordered. “You got to be sure you got the glass out of there.”

“I was a medic in the war,” Jake said. “I know how to fix a cut.” He led me, as though I were a small boy, into the hallway and down to his room.

“Ever since I needed a cane,” Jake said, “Mutt put me in this downstairs room. But I like it.” He took my candle and lit another candle on a mantelpiece over a small stone fireplace.

It was a nice room. The furniture was oak antique; plants hung in profusion from shelves and the ceiling, like an extension of Mutt's beloved greenhouse. A beautiful writing desk stood in the corner and I remembered Mutt mentioning Jake had many pen pals. He'd have a hell of a story to tell now. Family pictures dotted the walls, most of Mutt at various ages. There were some of a man I recognized as a much younger Jake with a child.

“That's Mutt,” Jake said. He went into the adjoining bathroom. “Pretty child he was, just like you.”

I shivered in delayed shock, soaked and chilled. My hand was a bright flame of pain. “He's not pretty, Uncle Jake. He's a murderer.”

“I'd prefer not to ponder that right now,” Jake answered. His tone was mild, as though this were a normal framework for conversation. He lit another candle in the bathroom. “Got to keep candles around when you live on the coast. Hate to take a dump in the dark.”

Despite the horrors of the night, I managed to laugh. Not much of a laugh, but a laugh. I suddenly wanted to see and hold Candace very badly.

“Now get over to the sink and rinse out that hand good. I'll fix you up a bandage.” I obeyed him, standing before the sink and rinsing my hand under the cool cascade of water. I was still soaking wet, but the water from the faucet seemed kinder than the rain. Blood spilled from my hand in ropy threads and I gritted my teeth against the sting. Jake, peering into his medicine cabinet by candlelight, hummed and extracted a box of bandages, antiseptic spray, and surgical tape.

“Quite a dispensary,” I said. The cut hurt like hell and I hoped glass hadn't lingered in the wound.

“Always had to be prepared,” he muttered. “Lolly so damn clumsy she was always hurting herself. I tended her more than she tended me.” He moved behind me and out of the small bathroom, giving me some room. “Use a towel to stanch the bleeding, son. I'll get your bandage ready.”

I pressed my forehead against the mirror, still wincing at the slicing pain across my palm. The glass felt cool against my forehead, like a tonic. This was not how I expected a family gathering to end-in murder, betrayal, and such deep sorrow. I felt like curling into a ball and letting my exhaustion take me.

Mutt had killed Lolly and Rufus, tried to kill Aubrey. Who wouldn't he have destroyed to hide his past? And I had so wanted to believe in him, to trust him.

But something was wrong. Why try to kill Aubrey? If Aubrey had discovered Mutt's plot to fake a death and light out with a new identity, Aubrey would have told Sass immediately. They were too concerned for their inheritance not to. Some piece of this puzzle was still missing. I remembered the note on Lolly's desk pad to return Aubrey's phone call. Had she confided in him, then blustered at the dinner table when she realized he was collecting information for a book about screwy families? Then if Aubrey knew what Lolly knew, Mutt did have reason to kill him. But I could prove nothing now. I blinked in quivering fatigue.

“Jordan? You okay?” Jake's voice was gentle.

I wiped my nose with my good hand. “Yes.” I came out of the bathroom. Jake sat me down on his bed, steadying himself with his cane. He took my lacerated hand gently in his. He applied the bandage-already wet with medicine- to the wound with a hard strength, like he was pressing a flower into a memory book.

The antiseptic stung sharply and I cried out.

“There, there,” Jake soothed. “It'll ease the pain, make it go away.” He wrapped the tape around the bandage three times with surprisingly nimble fingers, sealing it tight. My skin felt warm.

“Thank you,” I said.

He touched my cheek with his knobby finger. “Oh, Jordan. This hasn't been a good weekend, has it?”

Again, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He patted my shoulder and glanced up at the pictures on the wall.

“Oh, Mutt,” Jake murmured, and I heard a distant lament in his voice. “I loved that boy like my own son.”

“He didn't love you, Uncle Jake,” I said. I swallowed. Exhaustion made my face feel numb, and my skin burned and tingled. I rubbed my cheek with my good hand.

“He loved us all, Jordan,” Jake said, and for a moment there was such tender affection in his voice for his nephew I couldn't shatter his illusion. I stood, holding my wounded hand close to my chest.

“Love? Is that what you call what he did?” I stared hard at Jake. “I'm sorry, Uncle Jake, but Mutt's not right in the head. He shot Rufus dead. He killed his own sister.” And what about Aubrey? a voice deep in me piped up.

Jake lowered his eyes. “He didn't mean to hurt Rufus. Rufus just didn't want him to take the boat and tried to stop him.”

“Jake.” I leaned close. My lips felt heavy and I had trouble forming the words. “Mutt isn't dying of cancer. He's been planning to vanish, fake his own death, and hide out on his money. He was going to abandon you.”

“How foolish you are, Jordan. He's gone to seek help.”

I blinked at this utter abandonment of logic. “He wouldn't have left Rufus if that were true.” I felt sick at my stomach and I sat down on the bed. “And-” Argue the other side of the coin. Say Mutt had no reason to poison Aubrey. Aubrey's book was going to get rid of Philip as a problem, right? So who tried to kill Aubrey and Candace? Sass wouldn't poison her own son, Mutt's gone off for his new identity. Who in the original conspiracy is left? Oh, my God. It can't be.

Jake stroked my hair softly. “I was blond like you, when I was a boy. You're a good Texas German boy, like me.” He laughed thinly. “Oh, I know you think Mutt's awful. But he fixes things. He's always made what's wrong right again in our family.”

Anger flared in me. I swallowed the nausea I felt. “No, Uncle Jake. He hides things. He makes sure everyone else hides things, too, until the truth explodes in your face.” I stood. “I know about Paul. I know what my father did. And I still love him. If y'all hadn't hidden Paul's death at the time-Pop probably would have gotten off with self-defense. Pop wouldn't have had such terrible guilt over all these years, Gretchen, maybe she wouldn't have drunk herself into a stupor, and Brian-” My throat, my lips felt coated with novocaine. I sat down roughly on the edge of the bed, my eyes round with surprise.

“Brian,” Jake said airily, “was an annoying little shit who got what he deserved. Just like you are.” He leaned close to my face, his breath sweet like cinnamon. “Can you feel it working in your veins, my boy?”

“What-what-” I tried to stand, but stumbled, fell to the floor, clawed at the bandage he'd kindly wrapped around my hand. My skin burned.

“Monkshood,” he answered conversationally. “Oh, it's very nasty. Very. A little dab'll do you. You might have as little as ten minutes left.”

I tried to speak, but my throat felt like stone. I wobbled to my feet, the door blurring before my eyes. A sharp crack sounded and I realized, as I went to my knees, that Jake had struck me in the shoulder with his cane. I'd hardly felt it.

“I knew of boys in the Great War,” he murmured to me. “Forced to live in the French countryside for what they could forage. Eating monkshood killed quite a few.” I saw, through the haze descending across my eyes, a smile light his face.

Pop! Candace! I wanted to scream. Oh, God, no. Not like this. No.

“Why-why-” I managed.

He leaned down from the bed, prodding me with his cane. “Because you know. Do you know how tired I am of worrying about who knows, and who doesn't know? I'm old, and I deserve some peace of mind.” He tapped my shoulder. “It was my idea to hush up Paul's death. Of course I love your father, and I didn't want him to suffer for killing a no-account like Paul. I knew he would never talk; he was too deeply ashamed, and besides, he'd done the killing. And Mutt and Sass could be trusted-they helped dispose of the body. But Lolly”-he made a tsking sound-”she wasn't very trustworthy. Did you know. she'd even told me she'd been seeing Paul's ghost? And Brian's ghost, here in this house. She was going crazy, slowly. And she was starting to talk about what we'd done.”

The dancing light of the candle made flames appear in the holes of his eyes. I tried to scream, to scream my throat raw. A wobbly moan came out, guttural, unformed.

“Everything was fine until Brian decided to pry into his father's death. Lolly apparently kept Paul's jewelry-but you know that, don't you? Whatever Lolly was thinking by holding on to those baubles escapes me. Her silly sentimentality, I suppose. And Brian found them. And began digging around.” He prodded me again with the cane. “It was very annoying to have to kill a child. I'm not a monster. I have feelings. But children should know their place, don't you think?”

I glanced away from his madman's eyes. My blood felt clogged with ice. I pulled away from him, but my strength waned. I collapsed at the foot of the bed. Huddling on the floor, I tore the bandage away with fumbling fingers. Suddenly the lights came on, power returning to the house. I squinted against the sudden brightness.

“There's no specific antidote for monkshood,” Jake informed me, consideration oozing from his voice. “Don't trouble yourself with the bandage. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't bleed on my rug.”

“You're-you're insane,” I burbled.

“No, you are. For sticking your nose into people's lives, into murder.” He leaned close to me. “I tried to warn you away when I heard you fancied yourself a detective, but you didn't pay attention to the little cards I sent you.”

“But Lolly-”

“Lolly, my ass.” He sniffed. “I sent those cards to you, mailed by my pen-pal friends. They didn't know what was inside the envelopes. They thought I was just playing a little prank on a fellow hobbyist.”

His breath smelled foul against my face. “Didn't it ever occur to you prying could be dangerous? It didn't occur to Aubrey either in writing his stupid book, but look what happened to him.” He paused for a moment and I thought, Don't let the last words I hear be this madman's ravings. Oh, Pop, Candace. I'm sorry. Sister. Mark. Mama. I love y'all. Goodbye. Daddy? Trey? Are you there? Come find me. Tears rolled down my cheek, and I could feel my life ebbing. Fear speared through the numbness in my body.

“And look what you made me do! I have nothing against Candace or your child. Your child's blood is on your hands, not mine!” His voice rose to a shriek. He poked hard at the tears on my cheek. “Quit crying! You don't know what grief is, whelp! Stop it!” I felt a faint poke against my cheek as he jabbed me hard with the rubber tip of his cane.

A hard knock rapped on the door. I heard Pop: “Jordan? Uncle Jake? The phones are working again-”

I tried to yell, but it was hardly more than a gasp. Jake threw a pillow down on my head and called: “Jordan's fallen asleep, Bob Don, and I don't want to wake him. Come back later.”

I yanked the pillow from my head, my vision swimming, and somehow found air to fight past the deadness of my throat and my tongue. I screamed, a long, wavery sound.

“Jordan! Jake, what's wrong?”

The end of the cane slammed against my head.

“Jordan?” The door pounded with the force of Pop's blow. I pulled myself out of the cane's reach, adrenaline pumping me to my feet. No way was I giving up to die. I staggered toward the wall, trying to aim for the door.

Very nasty. Very. You may not even have ten minutes left.

Blurriness descended across my eyes, and I sagged against the wall, fighting to keep my balance. I saw Jake, murkily, moving off the bed and toward me, his hand pressed against his chest.

The door buckled in, wood splinters flying as the hinges cried out in protest. Pop was there, catching me, cradling me in his heavy arms.

“Oh, sweet God!” he cried out. Nausea squeezed my guts.

Jake's voice, wavery and a little breathless, drifted into my ear as I gasped against my father's rain-wet shirt, “Bob Don, now it had to be done.” He let out a raggedy, tortured breath. “Jordan would have told on us all-”

“What have you done to my boy?” Pop screamed, and he shoved me toward the bathroom. Suddenly my head was dangling above the toilet and Pop's fingers were jammed in my throat. Already nauseous, I retched, but slapped his hand away from mine. “No-didn't swallow. On my skin. He poisoned-the-bandage-” Pop shoved my hand under the faucet, rinsing my palm, screeching at the top of his lungs for Deborah and the others.

“There's no antidote, Bob Don.” Jake spoke, his breath coming in short gasps. “I'm sorry. You see the sacrifices I make-for the family. You see I had to do it, for you, for all our sakes.” His own color didn't look good through my glassy vision. “I don't feel well. Now kiss Jordan goodbye, and fetch me my heart pills. Please-”

Pop released me. I stumbled back into the bedroom, leaning against the elaborate oak paneling of the room I would die in. I slid to the floor, blinking hard, wondering if I could ever feel warm again. I swallowed bile. I blinked harder as I heard voices raised in fear, screams, supplications.

Bob Don, for God's sake, get me my pills… my pills… oh, God.

I tried to call back-was one voice Gretchen's? My throat refused to work. I raised an arm, feeling as if breath were a memory, and focused my vision on the figures in the room. I could see Jake's hand raised in a silent plea, Pop's hand holding something just out of his grasp.

You kill my boy and you want your goddamned pills, old man?

I watched a hand fall, I watched a life end. I closed my eyes.

More screams. Someone rushing past me, into the bathroom. Hands touching me, pulling me up from the floor. A kaleidoscope of noise, and fear, and grief, and in the middle of it all, Pop standing before the bed, with Uncle Jake lying before him, fingers splayed out across his withered chest.