Red Cat

38

Deering was alive. He moved a paper-white hand when I stepped into the room, and opened cloudy, terrified eyes. His desiccated lips parted, and a groan came out. A sheen of sweat covered his gray face, and his thin hair was plastered to his head. His right arm cradled his gut, and his right hand was pressed to a wet patch on his left side. Blood soaked the left side of his plaid shirt from armpit to waist. His khakis were stained with something else. Deering’s breaths were rapid, shallow, and uneven, and if he hadn’t already crossed into shock, he was right at the edge. I looked at Nicole. She hadn’t moved, except to point the gun at her husband.

“He said you were coming. He told me last night.” Her voice was shaky, and she had trouble with the volume. One of her legs was quivering, and strands of tired red hair fell across her face. There were sooty circles under her eyes, and red patches on her neck and bony cheeks. The gun was black and hammerless, and Nicole ran a nervous thumbnail over the top of the rubber grip.

“That’s what started it- that you were coming. He said you were coming to talk more about Holly, and that you had questions about Redtails, and Dad. I asked him how you knew about Redtails, and…he came apart.”

I nodded, and put on my most earnest face. “Uh-huh. We should call an ambulance now, okay? We should get you some help here.”

She shook her head absently. “He said he couldn’t take it any more- the lying. He said it was making him crazy, and that he was glad it was over, that he was exhausted. Can you believe he wanted me to feel sorry for him? Feel sorry, for chrissakes!”

I nodded some more. “We should call an ambulance now, Nicole, and get all this taken care of.” I eased my cell phone from my jacket pocket.

Nicole pointed the gun at me. “No calls,” she said. She was quite certain. “He falls apart- crying, hysterical- and I’m supposed to take care of him. Comfort him! He was grabbing my arm, kissing my hands, burying his face in my shoulder, begging forgiveness. Like I’m supposed to make everything all right.” She looked down at the gun in her hand and almost smiled.

“When I brought Daddy’s gun down, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He ran around the house, screaming like a girl. He wet his pants, for chrissakes. I should’ve left him in the snow all night.”

“You shot…Herbert was shot last night?”

She nodded vaguely. I looked at Deering again and saw what might have been a blood-soaked dishtowel clutched in his right hand. He opened his mouth and managed a parched whisper.

“I’m sorry, Nikki, I-”

The gun swung back to Deering and I gritted my teeth. “I don’t want to hear from you, Herb. Not one word!”

I took a slow breath, and tried to keep my voice conversational. “When’s the last time you ate, Nikki?” I said.

She ignored the question, but turned back to me. She held the gun out for me to see. “This is what he used, you know- my father’s gun. The little bastard took it from my lingerie drawer.” She turned to Deering again, and her face darkened. “So on top of everything else, you’re a thief too!”

She pointed the gun at him again, her bony fingers white on the grip. My heart was pounding, and my ribs were shaking in my chest. I gulped some air. “Let me get you something, Nikki- some water, something to eat…” I took half a step backward, and the S amp;W swung over again, following me like a camera lens.

“Stay here,” Nicole said. She squinted at me, as if recognizing me for the first time. “What did you want from him? Why did you want to talk about Redtails?”

I fought to keep my voice steady. “Holly mentioned it, on some videos she made when she visited your father. I wanted to know what it was, and why she didn’t want it sold. And I wanted to ask about those visits. Herbert told me she never saw him, but apparently she did.”

“Is that a surprise- that he lied to you? Is that a big shock? Lying is what he does.” Deering shifted on the chair and another groan came from him, from deep in his chest. Pain rippled across his face and Nicole pointed the gun at him.

“What is Redtails, Nicole?” I asked. Even to me, it sounded desperate and too loud.

Nicole’s lipless mouth split into a nasty grin, and something like a laugh came out. She looked at Deering. “You idiot. You thought he knew something! You came crying to me with your confessions because he was coming here, and you thought he knew. And it turns out he doesn’t know anything. You stupid, pathetic idiot.”

Her knuckles whitened on the gun again, and I cleared my throat. “What is Redtails?” I repeated softly.

She shook her head. “It’s a cabin. Not even a cabin, more like a falling-down shack. One room, an outhouse, and a sagging porch- but she could never get over the place.” She turned back to Deering again. “And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it, Herbert.” There was loathing in her tone and on her face. Deering stayed silent.

“It’s a house?” I asked.

“It’s a shack, I told you- a fucking shack, on a big piece of land. Redtails-Holly gave it that name, like it was a manor house or something. She was six or seven, and we saw a pair of hawks up there one weekend- that’s when she came up with it. And just because it was Mother’s, just because Mother went there when she was a girl, and it was in her family for who knows how long, Holly was fixated on the place. But Mother didn’t leave it to Holly, did she? No- she left it to Daddy, to do with what he wants.”

A bead of sweat rolled down my ribs, and my fingers ached on the grips of the Glock. Deering was looking at me, and looking for- whatcompassion? Rescue? He kept shifting in his chair, and every time he did, Nicole pointed the gun at him and I held my breath.

“And now your father wants to sell?” I asked.

Nicole frowned. “Daddy’s not up to dealing with that kind of thing right now; that’s why he turned those decisions over to me. I’m the one who wants to sell, and why not? The kind of care he needs- it’s goddamn expensive, and more so every year. Developers will pay a lot of money for five hundred acres in Columbia County right now. That made Holly even crazier- the idea that the money would pay for Daddy’s care.”

I nodded. “You argued with Holly about it?”

“We didn’t talk.”

“You didn’t see her when she visited your father?”

Disgust became anger on Nicole’s face. “If I could’ve arranged it, I wouldn’t have let her visit. The way she carried on with him, with those questions and taping everything- going on about Mother, how what she did to herself was Daddy’s fault…As far as I was concerned, Holly was abusing him with all that. Nobody agreed with me, but I certainly wasn’t going to stand around and watch it.” She turned to Deering again and held the gun in front of her, in both hands. My grip on the Glock tightened. I watched Nicole’s fingers and concentrated on keeping my arm loose.

“No, it wasn’t Holly I argued with about the property,” Nicole said. “It was him. And now I know why.”

I thought about the video I’d seen last night- the footage on the unmarked disk- and thought that I knew why too. But I needed to hear them say it. Slowly, so as not to spook Nicole, I rolled my shoulders and worked the kinks from my neck. Nicole brought the gun to bear on me again.

“Why does Herbert care about the property?” I asked.

Nicole’s weathered face darkened. She drew back her lips and looked at Deering. “Why don’t you tell him, Herbert? Go ahead- tell him why.”

Deering tried again to sit up, but a wave of pain washed across him and he slumped lower in the chair. His eyes wandered awhile before they found me. When they did, they were forlorn.

“Tell him!” Nicole shouted. Her shrill voice echoed off the glass.

“She forced me,” Deering said. His voice was barely a whisper now, barely more than rustling leaves. “Holly forced me.”

“Forced you how, Herbert?” Nicole said, as if she were speaking to a very slow, very trying child.

Deering closed his eyes. “She’d made a video. She said I had to convince Nikki not to sell Redtails, and that if I didn’t- if I couldn’t- she’d show it. She’d show it to Nikki.”

“Tell him what was on the video, Herbert.” She pointed the gun in encouragement.

Deering slumped lower, and his head lolled to the side. “It was a video of me and Holly. We were…in bed.”

I nodded slowly. Having seen the video last night, I understood how Herbert Deering might be driven to distraction- might be driven well beyond- by the thought of his wife watching it. I also understood why he’d offered such a pallid description of the footage: “in bed.”

I’d begun to think of the video as Holly’s test reel, because it incorporated so many essential elements of her later work: graphic, edgy sex, themes of dominance and submission, and a wrenching, punitive interrogation at the end. But there were differences, too. The technical ones were comparatively minor- brighter lighting, murkier sound, the use of a single camera. The important distinction was in the lack of anonymity: the fact that Deering was unmasked- face and voice- throughout, and the fact that he and Holly knew each other outside the confines of the hotel room. So, besides the vivid renderings of Deering’s lust for Holly, the video also documented his many declarations of love for her, his lengthy discourses on Nicole’s sexual deficiencies- on her deficiencies in general- and, near the end, his proposal of marriage to his sister-in-law.

Nicole chuckled grimly. “Of course, Herbert couldn’t give away water in the desert, and all his babbling to me about Redtails-‘Let’s hang on a little longer, it’ll be worth even more next year’- just made me angry. It made me push the deal along faster.”

“What happened then?” I asked.

Nicole looked at Deering. “Go on, Herbert- tell.”

He shook his head. “No, Nikki-”

“You do as I say, you prick!” she said, and she took aim squarely at Deering’s head. He squeezed his eyes shut, and Nicole looked at him with fresh disgust. “You tell him, or I swear to Christ I will shoot you again!”

Deering kept his eyes closed, and his words were nearly lost in the dry rasp of his breathing. “I went to see her, down in the city. I went to explain that Nikki wouldn’t…that I couldn’t convince her. I went to ask her- to beg her- not to do this. I-”

Nicole interrupted with another harsh laugh. “But you brought the gun along, didn’t you, you prick? You stole Daddy’s gun from me and brought it with you.”

He nodded weakly. “It was nighttime and we walked near the water, and Holly was in a bad way. Something happened, an accident or something, and she was bruised. And she was in a terrible mood- angry. I tried to explain about Nikki, but she wouldn’t listen. She yelled and threatened- said she’d send Nikki the video that night. And she called me names- stupid, useless, an ape…

“And then I hit her. I hit her with the back of my hand. I didn’t plan it- it just happened, and she fell down. I tried to help her, but she pushed me away, and when she got up, she was holding a brick. She cursed at me and threw it and it almost hit me. Then she picked up something else, a broken bottle, and she was screaming at me and calling me names, and…” Deering’s head dropped and his shoulders shook.

“Christ, just say it, Herbert- say what happened next.”

He didn’t look up, but he said it. “I took out the gun…and I shot her.”

I let out a deep breath, and something unwound in my gut. Nicole stared at her husband, like a bluejay at a worm. “What happened after that?” I asked.

“I took her things…her clothes…and I threw them in a storm drain. I put her…her body…in the river. Then I went to her apartment, to look for the disk, but I couldn’t… It was a mess, torn apart, so I got out and went home.

“You came by the next day, and ever since, I’ve been…crazy. I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight.” Deering pressed his right hand harder against his side, and folded around his wound. The pool beneath his chair was larger now.

Nicole snorted. “Hell of a guy, isn’t he?” she said. There was a wild light in her blue eyes.

I looked at her. “Let me call an ambulance, Nicole- for your sake as much as his. If he dies-”

She ignored me. “I knew Holly. I knew what she was like, how selfish she was, how self-indulgent and sick, that there was nothing she wasn’t capable of. Holly didn’t surprise me. But him…” She turned to Deering and brought the gun up again, in a two-handed grip. “You surprised me, Herbert. I thought I knew what you were about- not Superman, maybe, not the brightest bulb, but not a guy who’d fuck my evil sister, either. It turns out you were full of surprises. Live and learn, I guess.”

“Let me make a call, Nicole- for you. You don’t want to sit here and watch him bleed out.”

She laughed, an unlovely, crazy sound. “You sure about that?”

“He’s not worth it, Nicole. Come on.” She looked at me and sighed, and let her hands fall to her lap. She took a deep breath and a shiver ran through her. Her face seemed to collapse on itself, and she looked a thousand years old. “Come on,” I said again.

She ran a hand across the back of her neck, and what was left of her ponytail was gone. Her hair fell forward in a tangle, and caught the winter light, which brightened it and made it somehow richer. For an instant, as she turned her head, it looked like Holly’s hair, and she looked more than a little like Holly. Nicole found a calm, exhausted smile. Her voice was quiet and even.

“You’re right- I don’t want to watch him bleed out,” she said. “It’s taking too damn long.” Then she shot him twice, and blew his chest apart.