Hemlock Bay

21

Saint John’s, Antigua

There was nothing more for Savich to do in Antigua. Timmy Tuttle, with two healthy arms, had Marilyn, and Savich didn’t want to even think of what he was doing to her.

Or maybe two different people had her, one wild-eyed man with black hair and two arms, and a woman with one arm and madness and rage in her eyes.

Savich couldn’t stand himself. He’d set up Marilyn, gotten an FBI agent killed, along with a local police officer, and left chaos in his wake. He knew he’d see Virginia Cosgrove’s sightless eyes for a very long time, and that long red gash that had slit her throat open.

Jimmy Maitland had taken his arm, trying to calm him down. “Batten down the guilt, Savich. I approved everything you did. We faced something or someone that shouldn’t have been there. It happened. You’ve got to prepare to move on.”

Maitland shook his head, ran fingers through his gray hair, making it stand on end. “Jesus, I’m losing it. There’s nothing more we can do here. We’re going home. I’m leaving Vinny Arbus and his SWAT team in charge. They’ll keep looking for Marilyn and coordinate with local law enforcement. This confusion, Savich, it will unravel in time. There’s an explanation, there has to be.”

Savich didn’t let Sherlock out of his sight. He realized soon enough that she was different-more quiet, her attention not on any of them, and he’d look at her and know she was thinking about what had happened, her eyes focused, yet somehow far away.

There was so much cleanup, so many explanations to give, most omitting the inexplicable things because they didn’t help anyone to know the sorts of things that could drive you mad. And most important, there was no sign of the man who’d taken Marilyn Warluski from the Saint John’s airport.

When they got back to Washington, Savich left immediately for the gym and worked out until he was panting for breath, his body so exhausted it was ready to rebel.

When he walked in the front door, feeling so exhausted each step was a chore, his son was there to greet him, crawling for all he was worth right up to Savich’s feet, grabbing onto his pants leg. Savich started to reach down to pick him up when he heard Sherlock say, “No, wait a second.”

Sean yanked hard on his father’s pants, got a good hold, braced himself, and managed to pull himself up. Then he grinned up at his father and lifted one leg, then the other.

All the miserable unanswerable questions, all the deadening sense of failure, fell away. Savich whooped, picked up his son, and tossed him into the air, again and again, until Sean was both yelling and laughing, one and then the other.

It was Savich who wrote Sean’s accomplishment in his baby book that evening. “An almost giant step for kid-kind.” Then “The leg lift, one at a time-he’s getting ready to walk, amazing. His grandmother says I started walking early, too.”

In bed that night, Sherlock nuzzled her head into Savich’s neck, lightly laid her palm over his heart, and said, “Sean brings back focus, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. I was ready to fall over from working out so hard when I walked in the house, and then he crawls over to me and pulls himself up. Then he lifts each leg, testing them out, nearly ready to take off. I didn’t think I had any laughter left in me, but I guess I do.”

“Don’t feel guilty about it. You should have seen Gabriella. She was so tickled when I got home, so proud of both herself and Sean that she couldn’t wait to show off what he could do. Those leg lifts, I haven’t read about that in any baby books. Gabriella got some video of him doing that with me. I swear she didn’t want to leave this afternoon. I expect her husband to call me and complain about what demanding employers we are.”

Savich settled his hand on her hip, kneaded her for a moment, thinking she’d dropped weight, kissed her forehead, then turned on his back to stare up at the dark ceiling.

“Dillon?”

“Hmm?”

“I waited until Sean was in bed and we were lying here, all relaxed.”

“Waited for what, sweetheart?”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve remembered some stuff that happened in that room at the airport.”

Hemlock Bay

Hoyt said, “You’ll never believe this, Simon!”

“Yeah, yeah, what, Clark?”

“Lieutenant Dobbs, he’s got-”

Simon heard the slight shifting in sound, perhaps a small movement in the backseat of the car, but just as he knew something was different, he felt something very hard come down over his right temple. He slumped forward on the steering wheel, his forehead striking the horn.

It blared.

“Simon? Simon, where are you? What the hell happened?”

Lily heard the horn. Their rental car? But Simon was there, surely. Then she realized something was very wrong. She was on her feet in a second, racing down those beautifully manicured paths to the visitors’ parking lot. She heard the man running behind her, just one man; she heard the deep crunching of gravel beneath his feet.

She ran faster, veering away from the parking lot, running back into the thick stand of hemlock and spruce trees. She was fast, always had been.

She heard the man shout, but not at her. He was shouting at his accomplice. What had happened to Simon? The horn was still blaring, but it was more distant now. And then she realized that he must have fallen on the horn. Was he dead? No, no, he couldn’t be, he just couldn’t.

She was through the trees, out the back, and there was the damned cliff, miles and miles of it, running north and south. She had been here before, and there wasn’t any escape this way. What to do?

She ran along the edge of the cliff, searching for a way down, and found one, some yards ahead just before the cliff curved inward, probably from sliding and erosion over the years. There was a skinny, snaking trail, and she took it without hesitation. There was nothing ahead except empty land dotted with trees and gullies. They’d get her for sure, that or just shoot her down. Maybe there was something there on the beach. Anything was better than staying up here and being an easy target.

The path was steep, and she had to slow way down. Still she tripped a couple of times, and the last time, she had to grab a bush that grew beside the trail to halt her fall. It had thorns, and she felt them score her hands and fingers.

She vaguely heard birds calling overhead.

She knew the men had to be nearly at the top of the trail now. They’d come after her. What was down here except more beach? There had to be someplace to hide, some cover, a cave, anything.

Her breath was spurting out of her, broken, tight. A stitch ripped through her side. She ignored it. She had to be calm, keep herself in control.

She kept her eyes on the winding trail. Wouldn’t it ever stop? She heard the men now, yelling from the top for her to come back up, they weren’t going to hurt her.

She managed three more steps, then there was a shot, then an instant ricochet off a rock just one foot to her right, scattering chips in all directions. A chip hit her in the leg, but it didn’t go through her jeans.

She hunkered down as much as she could, twisting to the left, then the right, going down until at last her feet hit the hard sand on the beach. She chanced a look back up to the top and saw one of the men start down after her. The other man was aiming his gun at her. It was a handgun, not accurate enough at this distance, she hoped.

It wasn’t. He shot at her three more times, but none of the bullets seemed to strike close to her.

She stumbled over a gnarly piece of driftwood and went flying. She landed on her stomach, her hands in front of her face. She saw wet sand, driftwood, kelp, and even one frantic sand crab not six inches from her nose.

She lay there for just a moment, drawing in deep breaths, feeling the stitch in her side lessen. Then she was up again. She saw the man coming down the trail, but he wasn’t being as careful as she’d been. He was a big guy, not in the best of shape. He was wearing those opaque wraparound sunglasses, so she couldn’t really make out his features. He had thick, light brown hair and a gun in his right hand. She watched him stumble, wildly clutching at the air to regain his balance, but he didn’t. He tumbled head over heels down the trail and landed hard at the bottom, not moving. His gun. His gun was her only chance. She’d seen it flying. She ran to his side in an instant. She picked up a big piece of driftwood, realized it was soggy and not heavy enough, and grabbed up a rock instead. She leaned over him and brought the rock down on his head as hard as she could. She slipped her hand inside his coat and pulled out his wallet. She shoved it into her pocket, then saw the gun some six feet back up the trail, just off to the side, lying on top of a pile of rocks.

The man on top was yelling, firing, but she ignored him. She got the gun, turned, and ran for all she was worth down the beach.

Washington, D.C.

Savich felt his heart pounding faster beneath his wife’s palm. He shot up, turned on the bedside lamp, then faced her. “Tell me.”

“I remember being scared for you when I saw you go into that conference room. Then I’m sure I saw Timmy Tuttle dragging Marilyn into that security room across the hall. I ran into the room, the three other agents behind me. The room was empty. At least that’s what I thought at first.

“I saw this bright light, Dillon. It nearly blinded me, and I swear to you, for some reason I just couldn’t move. The light was right in front of that big window, and I know I saw Timmy and Marilyn in the middle of that light.

“I could hear the other agents yelling at each other. I realized they weren’t seeing what I was. Still I couldn’t move. I was just nailed to the spot looking at that white light. Then Timmy Tuttle grabbed Marilyn tight around her neck, and…”

“And what?”

“Dillon, I’m not crazy, I swear.”

He pulled her against him. “I know.”

“They just disappeared. It was like they were right in front of me, then they were in front of the window, and the window was bathed in the white light. Then they receded through that white light until they were gone. Then everything just seemed to close down. That’s all I remember.”

Savich said, “That’s just fine, Sherlock. Well done. It fits right into the rest of it. It seems logical to everyone that Tammy Tuttle used some sort of mass hypnosis. You know how David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China? How he got sawed in half with millions of people watching, most of them on TV?”

“Yes. You think Tammy has this skill?”

“It makes sense. There she or he was with Marilyn, and then she or he just wasn’t there. I think the whole thing was this big performance that she worked out to show us that we are dealing with a master. You know what else I think? I think Tammy knew I was trying to trap her and using Marilyn as bait. She knew we’d be at the airport waiting for her. She was ready for us. I also think she really wants us to believe that everything we saw was supernatural, beyond our meager brains. But it’s not. She’s just very, very good. She wanted to scare us all to death, paralyze us. I do wonder, though, why she didn’t try to kill me.”

Sherlock pulled away, stroked her fingers over his jaw, and said, “I think it’s because she couldn’t get close enough to you. I’ve given this a lot of thought, Dillon, and I think you’re one of the few people Tammy’s ever met whom she can’t hypnotize or perform an illusion for when she’s up close to you. And if she can’t get close to you without your seeing exactly what she is, then she can’t kill you.”

“You mean if I had been close to her, I wouldn’t have seen Timmy, I’d have really seen Tammy?”

“Yes, it sounds reasonable. If she can’t get close enough to you without your seeing her exactly as she is, then she knows she’s at a disadvantage. When you were in the barn in Maryland with her, how far away were you standing from her?”

“Maybe two dozen feet.”

“And she was always just what she was? Tammy Tuttle?”

“Yes. She called the Ghouls, but she didn’t change. When I shot her, I saw the bullet nearly rip her arm from her body. I saw her fall, heard her yells of pain. She remained exactly what she was and who she was.”

Sherlock said, “Then at the airport, she just couldn’t get close enough to you to kill you. And she realized, too, that she couldn’t get too close or you’d see her as she really is and kill her. She’s being really careful after what you did to her at the barn.”

Savich said, “Jimmy Maitland called me at the gym, told me that Jane Bitt in Behavioral Sciences allowed that just maybe it is possible that Tammy is a strong telepath in addition to all her illusion skills. She won’t swear to it, says she doesn’t want to get mocked out, but we should consider it, given the incredible control Tammy was able to exert at the airport.”

Sherlock said, “So maybe she’s got both this talent and skill in creating illusions. I think you were right. Tammy knew that you were setting her up. She also knew that you would bring Marilyn. For whatever reason, she wanted Marilyn back. I’m just hoping that she didn’t want her back to kill her. Maybe she really is fond of Marilyn. Maybe Marilyn feeds her ego, makes her feel powerful because she’s so very malleable and suggestible. Tammy can make Marilyn see, make her believe anything she tells her to believe. Didn’t you tell me that Marilyn firmly believes everything Tammy says?”

“Oh, yes, and it’s genuine, Sherlock. Even under hypnosis, Marilyn was frightened of Tammy and she believed everything she said to Dr. Hicks and to me. She remembered it as fact, for heaven’s sake, so she had to have believed it.”

Savich threw back the covers and jumped to his feet. He grabbed a pair of jeans as an afterthought and pulled them on. “I’m going to do some research on this with MAX.”

He walked back to the bed, grinned down at his wife, pulled her up tightly against him, and kissed her until she would have just as soon he waited until morning to visit MAX. But she knew that brain of his was working again, asking questions, wanting to know everything, and fast.

“I won’t be gone too long.”

She lay back down in bed, shut off the table lamp, pulled the covers to her chin, and smiled into the darkness when she heard Dillon speaking to MAX down the hall in his study. She heard him laugh.