The Inquisitor

Chapter 19

I knelt in the darkness, watching.

Not that I could see much.

I more listened and waited.

The rain tingled my skin, heightening my senses.

If I could just get through this, I'd be in the clear. The idea left me incredulous, heady with relief. The obsession that had infested half my life would be lifted, the chasm it created filled, the hunger sated. It had seemed so overwhelming for so long, been so entwined in my psyche like a malignant tumor, I couldn't quite believe I'd finally excised it. But by hoisting Stewart Deloram into the noose and standing him on the brink, ruined and sentenced to death by hanging, I had accomplished exactly that, and more. Because unlike Jerome, who had faced doom with a determined courage, Deloram had screamed and sobbed for pity. Had he also uttered Jerome's name and begged forgiveness in all his garbled talk? I wanted to think so. That would have amounted to a confession- an unexpected bonus- and made his execution all the more perfect.

I started to tremble, not from cold, but at the freshness of the memory.

My plan had initially been to let Deloram endure the agony of a destroyed reputation for weeks, perhaps months, maybe even take his own life, just as Jerome had. But then I realized that I couldn't afford to wait, not with that damn cluster study in the works. Still, the justice of quietly stealing up the stairs and leaving that simpering coward to die a prolonged death alone in the darkness had filled me with exactly the tranquillity I'd hoped for. It reached back through all the scars and deep into the fissure I'd felt open on that November night in 1989, and salved it closed. At this instant of healing, the spectacle of him teetering on his toes, crying and struggling to draw breath, became an epiphany, one that I knew would displace the corrosive nightmares of the past fourteen years.

I also thought of the farmhouse surrounded with gardens and green hills where the shattered woman who'd never recovered from her loss of Jerome spent most of her days, self-confined with the blinds drawn, while my aunt cared for her.

Perhaps she would finally find solace as well, now that I had ended her long wait for vengeance. But she would still insist I feed her "all the tiny details" to let her "smell, taste, see, hear, and touch" how I'd destroyed his killer. She'd always claimed her catharsis wouldn't be complete unless she experienced every stage of that retribution herself, even if through my telling of it.

I'd little time to savor the possibility. Glancing in the direction of Janet's car, even above the storm I could hear faint traces of her screams. Definitely in labor now. And the heparin would be making her bleed. I'd injected it intravenously at the site of an abrasion where no one would notice the puncture wound. Nor would anyone have reason to do toxicology studies. They'd find her bled out, the consequence of a tragic miscarriage caused by accidental trauma. Of course I'd be there to manipulate everyone's interpretation in this direction.

I fingered the tire iron that I'd removed from the trunk of the car and used to break the door handle, jam the lock, and bend the roof latch so it wouldn't release, making sure she wouldn't be going anywhere. But Garnet should soon come looking for her. Take-charge Earl wasn't one to sit at home and wait for bad news. I'd counted on it, having no option but to silence him as well. He had a talent, more than anyone, for figuring everything out, and no way would he buy that Janet died here accidentally.

It wouldn't be easy to kill him.

I raised the tire iron in my right hand and sliced down with it. A menacing whoosh cut through the rain. That would be the force of the blow it would take.

I looked up in the direction of the highway and scanned a landscape I couldn't see, imagining the slope leading down from it. Occasionally a car or truck glided by, the sound of tires and motor drowned out by the hiss of the downpour, but the running lights, floating through the night like UFOs, gave me a sense of the terrain.

No way could a man slip and kill himself here. So I'd need to stage yet another credible accident, one that would make everyone think poor Earl had died of massive head trauma while trying to save Janet. At the moment I hadn't a clue what that mishap might be.

I would also have to take Garnet by surprise.

There I had an edge.

He wouldn't arrive the cool, rational, man in control who normally commanded ER with such a heads-up, steady-handed calm. Instead he'd be frantic to find Janet and not at all cautious.

I looked toward the tree where the car first hit and could barely make it out in the darkness. Neither could I see the ground around it. Earl, however, would probably have a light. If so, he'd spot his favorite resident lying there, and he'd stop and check me. Finding me alive but unresponsive, he'd rush on down toward the car to look for Janet. It should be easy to come up behind him with the tire iron.

But then what?

After I knocked him out, how to kill him and explain it?

I still had no idea.

I looked again toward the road.

The highway remained deserted for the moment. At least no one passing would see what went on down here in the dark- another plus.

I continued to stare, imagining the terrain between the highway and where I stood, trying to conceive a way to pull this off, but drawing another blank.

I felt a stab of panic. What if I couldn't think of something in time? Garnet could be here any second.

Once started, doubts nattered through me with the speed of a computer virus, and I knew for certain that all my plans, my subterfuge would end in disaster here at this last step.

The cries from the direction of the wrecked car below grew weaker. Or had the sound of the rain swelled? Its drumming disoriented me, the sameness of the noise as ubiquitous and confusing as the lack of visual markers in the darkness. My sense of up and down came only from the hard ground beneath my feet, and I widened my stance to better keep my balance.

Time played tricks as well. As I stood there, desperate for a way to deal with Garnet, the minutes oozed by so slowly they seemed to stand still. I nearly wore out the light on my watch checking it. Maybe I'd misjudged and Earl wouldn't show.

Eventually a white glow appeared beyond a line of bushes up beside the highway as a slowly moving vehicle drove into view. The lights, front and back, defined the shape of a van. It slowed and parked at an angle, the high beams on full. To my relief, the heavy rain made it impossible to see beyond a few hundred feet into the ravine.

The interior of the cab blazed white as the driver opened his door, and I saw Garnet slide out from behind the wheel. His tall figure became a silhouette as he started down the grade, flashlight in hand.

The sight of the man who had been my teacher, who would soon die, set my heart pounding, and I began to shake.

Yet borne on that same surge of adrenaline, the scenario I needed to explain his death crept to mind.