Sorrow's crown

ELEVEN

I staggered and scrambled and he hit me some more, moonlight flashing off his tooth and sick eyes, as he struck down with splitting, glancing blows again and again, on my crown and just over the top of my right ear. He liked to toy with his mark, taking his time to inflict the most damage. Shanks had mastered his technique in the rooms of Panecraft, using the sap for maximum pain but without allowing me to pass out. His shadow spun around me, the blackjack gliding in first from one side and then the other.

My head became an old dirty sponge jammed with gravel and broken glass. Shanks kept making sounds, little venomous squeaks in between the twittering of the cell phone, until his weird huffing squeals were louder than the tweets. Through the shroud of pain I realized he was laughing. We performed a brutal ballet across the living room and I felt the wet heat heavy in my nostrils, filling my ears and dripping down my neck.

The pain had almost lifted to a floating ache of dull purple and yellow streaks, and new star systems erupted with each strike, but still nothing that would put me all the way under. I couldn't get to the phone in my jacket pocket. I couldn't even find my hands. Frost gargled on the floor and I fell beside him, scrambling to my knees and collapsing again.

Shanks switched the sap to his left hand, hauled back and waited until I'd floundered into the correct position for him to bash me over the ear once more. I managed to wheel aside just enough so that he hit my shoulder instead, and my arm went completely numb. I dropped over backward and lay there breathing hard, unable to see him clearly enough through the glittering haze to protect myself in the slightest anymore.

He knew it, too. A lamp snapped on and a harsh circle of white lit the far corner, igniting among the rest of the swirling patterns of blunted colors vaulting before my eyes. Groaning, I wanted to roll aside but couldn't. My gaze had shifted back to see Brian Frost weakly struggling to get loose from the chair, groaning right back at me.

I expected a lot from Shanks but not this new silence. It went on and on. I had the bizarre sensation of standing outside myself and running through the house looking for Teddy, moving in behind Shanks and pummeling the crap out of him. Unfortunately, it was only a sensation. He stared at me with the clear and innocent eyes of a Secretary of Defense. He was in no rush to proceed.

He said, "You know what the beauty of this moment is?"

Neither Frost nor I had any answer and we both sort of rocked and continued to grunt.

Nick Crummler appeared in the foyer, hands in his pockets, his wet hair slung down across his eyes. Trails of rain poured down his face, and when he blinked water squirted out like tears.

"Oh," Shanks said, and stretched and rubbed his bad back. "It's you."

"Hello," Nick said.

They approached as if to shake hands, and my chest tightened until I thought it might crack, and I wondered about how it all fit, with the two of them working together. I struggled to think and make connections but the throbbing became a steel-toed boot kicking me in the head. I tried to talk but my bottom lip hung a half mile beneath the roof of my mouth. He hadn't hit me in the mouth, but I must've bitten my tongue because it felt swollen and bloody and too heavy for words.

Nick glanced down at me and shook his head. He looked up at Shanks as they moved closer toward each other, then back at me once more, still nodding. Sparky broke into a run and rushed Nick with the blackjack raised in his fist, and I felt a great sense of relief washing over me as I started to vomit.

The blackjack came up high and angled down at Nick, but when it descended it slipped through the air uninterrupted. Nick moved that fast. Overextending that way threw Shanks off and he nearly hit himself in the knee. I couldn't turn my head enough to watch the whole fight: they swerved in and out of my line of sight, Nick feinting, keeping tight, blocking blows and without any indication of what he was thinking. I craned my neck and my skull flooded with a vat of molten metal. I would've screamed if I could have found the rest of my mouth.

Rain hammered at the windows like the hands of children. The wind roared. They kept circling behind me, where I could hear wheezing and the slap of fists on flesh, Nick's coat still snapping as he wheeled to avoid the sap. They'd come around in a wide circuit over and again, and each time Shanks looked a little sweatier and a lot happier, thin ribbons of blood dangling from his chin, the ripped lip tearing his face up with a vicious smile.

"I should have killed you a long time ago," Shanks said. "It might've saved your life tonight."

"First thing I do when I get back to the hospital is break your brother's legs."

"You're not going back."

They stepped on Brian Frost's hair as they went dancing by and Frost didn't have enough left in him to even cry out. The floorboard in front of my nose thunked heavily with the weight of the blackjack. The cell phone was ringing and I couldn't tell if it had been doing so the whole while or if it had just started again. The back of Sparky's shoe brushed my nose.

Nick Crummler scooped up the blackjack and said, "I remember this." He hauled back his arm and brought up the sap. I knew what was about to happen. Nick showed nothing in his face but somehow the seething, irrepressible hatred he felt came through

I tried to shout "No," but all that came out was a garbled, "Uhnumn…" The blackjack kept rising. "Uhnumn."

Those hands, with the power in them, backed by his incredible fortitude, his rage, all the grudges in his life, especially those against a tormentor, and his need to protect his brother, coming in and down toward that smiling face. The blackjack wavered just a bit like it had hit an air pocket, then straightened and speeded up, gliding in the ultimate course of action, and smashing directly between Shanks' eyes.

Sparky stiffened as his frontal lobe caved in, and he went back onto the balls of his feet, wavered there for what felt like a few minutes, and slowly toppled to the floor, dead.

"Now that's the beauty of the moment," Nick Crummler said.

He answered my phone and told Lowell what had happened. He lifted and carried me over to a divan in the back room, untied Frost and sort of propped him up against my shoulder, staunched our bleeding heads and said, "You're going to be all right. Tell them the truth. I can't get involved with this and you know why." He put the phone on my lap and ate some of the crab meat quiche. "I'll be around."

I sat on the divan with a towel on the back of my neck and listened to Frost mumble in his semi-conscious state, slowly regaining some feeling in my extremities. By the time I heard the sirens and the room filled with whirling red-and-blue lights, and Lowell's face suddenly loomed in front of mine, I could almost stand.

Lowell put a palm to my chest and gently pushed me back down. "Careful, you might have a concussion."

"I'm okay," I told him, but it came out as though I was conjugating Latin verbs.

Lowell kept his hand on my chest. "Whatever the hell you just said proves my point, don't you think? Just lie there."

The ambulance and other deputies arrived a few minutes later, followed by Keaton Wallace who, for a Medical Examiner, always looked a little put out by blood. He stared at the floor where Frost and I had bled and screwed up his face. He didn't know whether to bag Frost's splintered teeth or let one of the cops do it. He fingered his dentures in sympathy. Wallace glanced over at me and said, "Jesus God, Jonny Kendrick, what the hell are you into now?"

The EMTs loaded Frost onto a gurney and rushed him into the back of the ambulance, taking his blood pressure and shouting numbers at each other. A petite blond with rubber gloves on and the fingers of a masseuse checked my pupils and scalp. She felt my lumps and washed me with something that stung like hell but also brought me fully back to my senses. She gave me a sweet smile that made me hurt worse. "We're going to take you in for a CAT scan."

I was ready to consent until the front door opened and a portion of Harnes' party-goers poured in: Anna and Broghin and Oscar, followed by a weeping Alice Conway, who stared over at Frost on the gurney. She hugged her elbows, and her knees were about to give out. Oscar realized she'd fall over any second and fumbled around trying to grasp her in his arms. Broghin pushed my grandmother into the foyer; he'd had a lot more practice with the wheelchair and could've maneuvered it up the rotting steps where Oscar probably couldn't have.

Lowell said, "Oh, Christ."

Sheriff Broghin remained extremely drunk, and the other deputies looked at him with the quiet, unhappy resignation of sons watching their father making a damn fool of himself.

Lowell nodded his head at me and asked the pretty blond EMT, "You taking him in?"

"He could use a CAT scan, to be on the safe side. Most of the wounds are superficial, a couple of deeper lacerations on the back of his head and neck, but you can't mess with a concussion."

Lowell stared at me hard, considering factors, friendship, the weight of murder. "I want to ask him questions first."

"I'm fine," I said, pretty shaky and sick, but at least my voice sounded a lot steadier.

"We've got to get that other kid out of here," she said. "He's stabilized, but still in bad shape. If he'd earned his muscles the hard way and wasn't swallowing steroids like me going through coffee he'd be a lot better off. A beating like that is a hell of a lot of trauma." She cocked a thumb at me. "Bring him by as soon as you can."

"Will do," Lowell said.

"Will do," I said.

She packed up her medical kit and joined the others in the ambulance, slammed the back doors and drove off across the lawn past all the traffic that had piled into the driveway.

"No comment about my hard head?" I asked.

"You're fortunate he liked to play games."

“I am?"

"Sap feels light, closer to three ounces instead of the usual five. If he wasn't taking his time toying with you, you'd be dead."

Lowell watched Broghin walking around doing his best not to stagger. He didn't comment on the fact that the sheriff had given an open invitation to a crime scene.

"You ready to take it from the top?"

"Yeah," I said, about to get into it, but couldn't shake my curiosity about something. "In just a second. What were you calling me about?"

"I'll tell you later."

"Come on, let's have it."

His stern face didn't soften as he decided whether to tell me or not. I knew it had to be bad then. When he realized I'd picked up on that he had no choice. "Somebody broke into Katie's flower shop. Roy was doing his rounds downtown, saw broken glass, and checked it out."

"Devington," I said. "Or his mother."

"It's not too bad, not like you might think. Just a few tossed plants and some busted pottery. No real damage. Wasn't even the front window, one of the little side panes."

"Couldn't have been his mother then, she'd never have gotten in."

"Roy cleaned it up, got some boarding to cover the window."

My head started to throb again, not where the sap had hit, but over on the other side where Devington's fist had caught me. I wondered how that might be possible, feeling the specific pain just by seeing his face again, the bile rising in my throat. "Some people have a hard time learning lessons."

He gave me a long humorless stare. "I've noticed that myself."

My cell phone rang and white-heat anger and agony came spearing down directly through the center of my brain and ignited Mrs. Devington's chunky putty face. Lowell came over and pressed a couple buttons on the phone and said, "You can adjust the volume."

"Jesus Christ, thanks."

I answered. Katie sounded sleepy and eager for company, and I didn't know what the hell to tell her about my hideous night and what had happened to the shop. I decided to wait and did my best to act unconcerned, praying she wouldn't worry. I flubbed it. I heard the rustling of her covers as she shot up in bed and said, "What's wrong?"

"It's okay. It's nothing."

"I hate when you say things like that. Now I'm really scared."

It took a couple of minutes to ease her mind enough to where she'd let me off with the promise of having breakfast with her.

Broghin pushed Anna toward us, and she had to reach down and grip the tires to brake herself or he would've shoved her right into the divan. My grandmother smiled sadly and took my face in her hands the way Katie sometimes did. I liked when they were willing to do that for me.

She looked at Lowell and said, "How is he, Deputy Tully?" She knew he was incapable of lying, even to soothe feelings.

"Lucky."

She shifted in the wheelchair and asked me, "How do you feel?"

"Lumpy."

"Yes dear, I'm afraid you're quite correct."

Her fingers worked softly through my hair, and Lowell let out a huff. He needed to get answers. Oscar Kinion stood behind the sheriff and leaned forward on him, and Broghin leaned forward onto the wheelchair. They both teetered a bit and stared at the rest of us as though we were speaking Mandarin Chinese. I got a pleasant thrill at imagining Broghin passing out and snoring loudly at the murder scene. Alice Conway continued to sob, standing alone and occasionally glancing over at Shanks' corpse, waiting for somebody to do or tell her something.

Anna kissed my cheek, waiting-like Lowell-for me to start telling it. She had more resolve than anyone I'd ever met, and I wondered what that, coupled to Harnes' calculating nature, could do in the world. She continued smoothing my hair as I told Lowell everything that had happened in the house. I kept out the fact that I'd picked up Nick Crummler outside of Harnes' estate and said I'd met him on the road much closer to town. I could feel the silky strands of secrecy wrapping around us, with my grandmother unwilling to let me in on whatever it might be she was keeping to herself.

When I brought the situation up to the moment Nick answered my phone, Anna stopped rubbing my head and sat staring at me. I stared back and we came to the silent understanding that when we got home the rest would have to be unraveled.

"Who the hell is Nick Crummler?" Lowell said.

In a faraway voice, as if he were trying to struggle back into himself and couldn't quite get there, Broghin said, "Zebediah Crummler's brother. Thought he'd be dead by now."

"Crummler has a brother, and everybody knows this except me?" Lowell called Roy over and passed on the information I'd given him.

"Haven't seen him in damn near fifteen years," the sheriff said sleepily. He was breathing only out of his mouth, taking large gulps of air like a hooked trout tossed up on the dirt. "He ought to be dead."

"I don't think you'll catch him," I said.

"Why?" Lowell asked.

"He reminds me too much of you."

"That's about as left-handed a compliment as I've ever been given."

His attention turned to Alice Conway and she drifted over like she'd been called to the head of the class. She worked her large, pouting lips, the deep brown circles under her eyes looking like they might eventually scrape bone. He said, "Do you know anything about what happened here tonight, Alice?" He wasn't really asking. He wanted answers and knew she probably had at least a few of them. A man had died in her living room and a friend of hers had bled so much that the wood of the floor would be permanently stained.

Anna said, "Take your time, dear."

Without further prompting, the sentences rippled from between her sobs. "Mr. Harnes drove my father out of business. Daddy put up a hell of a struggle but it didn't come to much. We lost everything less than two years ago. When my parents died last year there wasn't even any insurance. My father had been driving drunk. He drank a lot at the end."

Anna drew a short, noisy breath, and perhaps I did, too. My parents had died in a car accident, initially blamed on my father's drinking before we discovered that his best friend and business partner, my Uncle Phil, had actually rigged the brakes and murdered them. Anna had been in the car and crippled in the crash that night.

Alice sat on the divan where Brian Frost had bled, and the camera flashes went off in the other room, capturing Sparky's corpse from every angle. "Mr. Harnes doesn't care about anyone or anything, but most of you know that already. Look at this place." She made a sweeping gesture to show the extent of the house's emptiness. "He took it all. I'm telling you, he killed my mother and father, really. Really, he did. You should have seen them, how happy they were. How they used to dance, they loved to waltz, right here in this room. He's evil."

Lowell opened his mouth to ask a question but Anna put an arm around the girl, cradling her gently. My grandmother said, "And you and Brian plotted against him?"

Lowell's gaze flitted from Anna to Broghin and back again, and he must've found it more troublesome than not to get all of us out of here at this point. His cheeks and forehead had the barest touch of red. Anna liked words like "plotted" but Lowell sure as hell didn't. Neither did I. It sounded as if she might be defending Harnes.

"Teddy loved his father," Alice said. "He tried talking to him, to stop him from driving my dad out of business, but it didn't do any good. Mr. Harnes didn't even care that Teddy and I wanted to get married. Teddy tried getting some capital for me so that I could keep the house up, but that wasn't any good, either. He never actually had any of his own money. It was all his father's. Teddy didn't understand, he could afford to play around with art and philosophy, he'd never had to pay a bill in his life. Brian started arguing with him constantly after my folks died. Brian was only trying to help me."

Broghin and Oscar both had their eyes closed and had pinioned themselves against each other, nearly asleep standing up.

"Help you in what way?" Lowell asked. He looked proud to have sneaked a question into his own investigation. His face grew even more crimson, and I could tell he felt the whole night slipping even further out of his massive hands. He needed to interview Alice, but his eyes flicked constantly to Wallace handling Shanks' body, the other deputies searching for physical evidence, taking samples and bagging. His fingers trembled slightly because he knew he'd have to catch the sheriff soon. "What was he going to do?"

Alice couldn't answer right away. Her weeping had gotten so out of control that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Anna pressed the girl's face to her shoulder, making shusshing sounds hoping to quiet her. It took a while. I sat there with the towel on my neck, and Lowell and I looked at each other, both of us feeling lost. A part of me remained suspicious enough to wonder if Alice was actually only biding her time in order to get her story straight, but her sobbing was as real now as it had been at Teddy's funeral.

Finally Alice could continue. Her voice took on a harder tone. "I was desperate," she said. "That bastard . . . that rotten bastard. Nobody would help. I was losing the house. Teddy turned out to be useless. We broke up, more or less, but I was pregnant by then. Brian stood by me through it all."

"You poor child," Anna said. "What you've been through, alone." Alice Conway looked nothing like Diane Cruthers, but my grandmother, patting Alice's back, peered at her as if seeing her long-lost bridesmaid.

"Brian thought if I had the baby then Teddy or his father would feel obligated to care for it. For me. Teddy would want to, I knew, but he didn't understand how things worked. He loved his father too much to see what kind of a man he really was. Mr. Harnes wouldn't feel any responsibility, but I tried talking to him anyway."

I picked up on how she kept calling Harnes "mister." Like Dr. Brennan Brent calling Sparky "Mister Shanks." Even angry, or scared, they showed proper deference.

"Brian wanted me to go to the papers and cause a stir. We knew Mr. Harnes had had lots of difficulties and bad publicity with women before, but never where Teddy was concerned. It was wrong. I know it now. I knew it then, but I didn't see any way out. Brian threatened to go to the papers and we said we'd cause trouble. Teddy was devastated." She frowned and shrugged off Anna, and an even sharper edge entered her voice. "He was so stupid, he just didn't get it. What it was like to have creditors calling all the time, county taxes, they were going to foreclose. Look at this place, just look at it. Falling apart. Even the man who'd cut my parents' tombstone threatened to repossess it, can you imagine? Taking back a gravestone? Can they do that? Why would anybody want to do such a thing?"

"What happened when you approached Theodore Harnes?" Anna asked.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. He didn't even get mad or anything. He's a man who enjoys a standoff. He said he liked me. That drove Brian crazy. Brian said we should go to the papers and say Mr. Harnes and I had an affair. Brian used to be Teddy's best friend, but he learned to hate him so much in almost no time."

"Why were you at the gathering tonight, Alice?"

"Mr. Harnes invited me," she said. "Maybe to scare me. I was already scared, way too frightened to say no. After Teddy died I wanted to tell him we wouldn't do anything. Brian and I wouldn't cause any waves, we'd let it all drop. I guess he didn't believe me. I lost the baby. I just wanted somebody to help me a little."

"Did Frost know Shanks?" Lowell asked.

"Is that the dead man? I don't know him. I don't think Brian does, either."

"Shanks never threatened you?"

"Nobody ever threatened us."

"Why don't you get along with Daphne Kupfer?" I asked.

"Oh, that. She liked Brian. She likes lots of young guys. She was always running after him."

Such a simple answer, so much more believable than when I'd let my imagination snag me into thinking that everybody I knew was Harnes' bastard kid.

Why would anyone cut off his face?

I didn't believe Teddy had faked his death anymore, but I needed to gauge her reaction anyway. "Was Teddy hiding here?" I asked.

"Teddy?" Alice's bloodshot eyes rolled and focused on me. "Hiding?" She looked at me as if I were insane. She wasn't alone. They all looked at me as if I were insane.

"Do you think Brian might have killed Teddy?" Lowell asked.

One on one, down at the police station in his office, the question would have had a greater impact, but the rest of us diffused the situation. He was hoping to pull her off-guard and see how real her tearful act actually might be. It failed miserably, with Anna's arm around Alice as the girl's shoulders shook. Lowell undermined himself as well, forced to suddenly reach out to grab Broghin and Oscar firmly by their elbows before both men went toppling over. Each of them snorted loudly and blinked at him.

Anna breathed softly, "Oh, my heavens."

"No, no, of course not," Alice Conway said, frowning. "Brian couldn't have. He wouldn't have."

"You said he learned to hate Teddy."

"He was angry about everything, but he never would have hurt anybody."

I thought about roid rage, how I could almost feel Brian Frost's venomous thoughts wishing me to die the day I'd visited. I thought he could have very easily murdered Teddy Harnes, and that Alice could have made him do it by simply asking. I looked into her eyes and thought I saw the fangs of the dragon there.

No wonder Nick Crummler had been afraid of Felicity Grove. All of us who lived here seemed to possess the beast, or to have been bitten by it.