“So,” he said, “this Houston Mile had something to do with it.”
Ginny rolled her chair forward so that she could lean her arms on the desktop. With that wound in her shoulder, she must have found it hard to hold the gun. As if to let Reeson know that the .357 wasn’t intended for him, she put it down on the big blotter that covered half the desk.
“No.” She did her best to sound clear, but I heard the strain in her voice. “If anything, I’m sure he isn’t involved. He’s just dangerous. He’s a coward. He wants to blow people away before they get a chance to threaten him.”
“Does that mean you don’t know anything?” Reeson asked. Somehow he managed not to sound critical. “You don’t have any ideas? You haven’t found any”—despite his careful tone, his pause gave the word a little sneer—“clues?”
“Oh, we have enough evidence to convict a truckload of murderers.” From where I stood, I couldn’t see Ginny’s face, but her tense posture made her look like she was engaged in some kind of contest with Reeson. “We just don’t know what it all means.”
He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me about it.”
She nodded curtly. “I’ll give you the short form.”
Outside night came down fast as the mountains cut off the light.
“A while after you left, Brew took a nap in the den. Someone dropped rat poison in the fireplace. Nearly asphyxiated him.”
The world was growing as dark as when Cat was shot. The lights in the office seemed unnatural, fragile somehow, like you couldn’t trust them.
“When we checked the wine cellar, Simon Abel was gone. Someone broke him out through the wall. We haven’t seen him since. But he left a trail in the snow, so I followed it. Got shot for my trouble.” She pointed at her temple.
“While I was gone, Mac Westward had too much to drink at lunch. He went to his room to sleep it off. Someone went into his room and broke his neck. When I—”
“Wait a minute,” Reeson interrupted. “While you were gone? How could somebody shoot you outside and still be inside breaking Westward’s neck?”
“Interesting question,” Ginny drawled acerbically. “If you think of an answer, let me know.”
Soon the light inside and the dark outside blinded the window. The glass looked opaque, like the surface of a black pool. Anything could happen out there now, and we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
“When I got back,” she continued, “Queenie Drayton decided she needed a drink. It was poisoned. She went into a seizure.”
Obliquely I noticed that Ginny didn’t identify the drink. Her caution may’ve been unnecessary, but I approved anyway.
“We thought the killer had to be somewhere in the lodge, so we organized a search. While we were doing that, someone came up behind me and stuck a knife in my shoulder.
“So far we’ve lost Cat, Simon, and Mac, and Queenie may die.”
Ginny stopped.
Reeson’s eyebrows did their dance on his forehead. The moral equivalent of whistling in surprise. First he said, “None of this makes sense.” Then he asked, “What’s your ‘evidence’?”
“I’ll give you an example.” Shock and loss of blood frayed her voice. She sounded like she had the same fever I did. “Brew, this is what I wanted to talk to you about.” She didn’t glance at me. “I think I know how Queenie was poisoned.”
Reeson and I both listened. Judging by appearances, however, he paid more attention than I did. Fury and chemicals made a witch’s brew in my blood, and the cauldron’s seething consumed most of my brain. I’d already missed my chance to save Queenie. If I didn’t start to think effectively, I’d continue missing vital connections and clues until we all died for it.
“Before I was stabbed, I had time to search two rooms, Mile’s and Lara’s. I didn’t find anything useful in his. But in hers”—she paused to focus her anger—“I found cocaine. A lot of it.”
The cauldron bubbled and spat. Coke might explain a lot of Lara Hardhouse’s behavior.
“Do you know what happens,” Ginny demanded, “when you get a massive overdose of cocaine? You go into seizure. Every one of your muscles locks up. You can’t even breathe. Even if your heart doesn’t fail from shock, you die because you get no air. Or you collapse into a coma because of the brain damage.”
She sounded quietly savage, too angry to suffer her own despair. “But we know Lara isn’t the killer. Brew was with her when Mac died.”
I couldn’t suffer it myself. My heart felt as black and blind as the window, and I’d come to the end of what I could endure. Window latches and port. Vengeance and wine cellars. And something else that might boil to the surface any second now.
“I’ll give you another example,” I said harshly. “Another useful bit of ‘evidence.’ We know that shot wasn’t aimed at Cat. It was aimed at me.”
Reeson cocked his head. His scowl flickered on the edge of a smile.
“A goon called el Señor wants me dead. And he’s got his hooks into a private investigator named Lawrence Smithsonian. You’ve heard of Smithsonian. He arranged this job for us. He even called me while I was in the hospital, trying to scare us into taking this job.
“Why do you suppose he did that? I think he wanted to set us up. He knew el Señor could have me killed when I got here.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Reeson answered noncommittally. “But it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t explain why Westward was killed, or why Mrs. Drayton was poisoned.”
He didn’t mention Simon. I noticed that.
“Because,” I said.
Window latches and port. Vengeance and wine cellars. Coke aimed at Cat had poisoned Queenie, I couldn’t argue with that. And Lara Hardhouse had cocaine. But it was an amateur job, dependent on chance. The dose had to be enough, or the treatment had to be wrong, or the treatment had to come too late. And Mac’s murder relied on chance. Connie could’ve walked into the room at any moment. And the knife in Ginny’s back was another amateur job, rank with chance and luck.
But—
Any killer hired by el Señor wouldn’t trust chance. He wouldn’t shoot Ginny and then run down to the lodge in broad daylight just hoping that someone had left a window unlatched. Too many things could go wrong. First he’d make sure Ginny was dead. If she hadn’t played dead trying to trap him, he would’ve finished her. Then he’d take all the time he needed to come back carefully.
“Because,” I said, “we have more than one killer.”
Instinctively Ginny twisted in her chair to stare at me.
A smile twitched Reeson’s mouth, and his eyebrows worked.
“One of them is el Señor’s hit man,” I told her. “He shot Cat and you, broke Simon out of the wine cellar, put rat poison down the chimney. The other killed Mac and doped Cat’s drink and stabbed you.”
Out of an obscure sympathy for vulnerable women, I added, “It doesn’t have to be Lara. Anyone who searched her room could’ve found that coke and used it. Or someone could’ve planted it in her room. Like the rifle in Simon’s closet.
“But there have to be two of them. Mile is right about that. An amateur and a professional. The pro wants me. The amateur is just trying to take advantage of the confusion.”
Then I had it. The cauldron spat in my face so hard that I nearly went blind, and the room started turning on its axis, changing the meaning of everything. But I had it.
Facing Reeson with blood in my throat and no strength left, I said, “You never went for help. There’s no help coming. After you tried to shoot me and hit Cat, you decided to get away from the scene so that we wouldn’t connect you with whatever happened next. And you wanted to keep your freedom of movement. But you didn’t go anywhere. You freed Simon from the wine cellar and ditched his body and shot Ginny, and now you’re back to finish the job.”
Until I saw Ginny’s stunned expression, I didn’t understand how much trouble—personal trouble—she’d had wi
th this case. It wasn’t just a matter of being shot and stabbed. Or of having her wounded partner wander around like the universal victim. Her fear of el Señor and her involvement with Hardhouse got in her way. She actually didn’t seem to grasp the implications of what I said.
“Axbrewder,” Reeson murmured gently, “the ghouls and beasties are getting the better of you. You’ll look pretty foolish when the sheriff gets here.”
Ginny swiveled slowly to face him. He didn’t take his eyes off me, however, and a moment later she swiveled back. Her gaze was fractured and uncertain. It reminded me of the way she’d looked after she first lost her hand. Uneasily she asked, “How do you know all that?”
Pain throbbed through my stomach. I wanted to jump Reeson, but I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t let myself meet his gaze.
“The killer has to be someone who works here. Someone with inside information about the lodge. That’s obvious.” So obvious that it hadn’t occurred to me until a moment ago. “But the Carbones and Faith never go anywhere. El Señor couldn’t use a hired killer who lived up here all the time. That leaves Reeson. He takes vacations and doesn’t even tell Faith where he’s going.”
Ginny shook her head. “Slow down. Back up. Why is it obvious? Even if you’re right about two killers, why does either of them need inside information?”
The throb expanded. I heard an odd rushing noise like a gale chewing on the trees around Deerskin Lodge. Too much pain and infection and anger—too much medication. The gale seemed to crowd the edges of my vision, contracting my field of view.
“Because of the rat poison.”
Ginny’s mouth shaped the words, rat poison, but no sound came out.
“No one knew it was there except the people who work here. Anyone who wasn’t personally familiar with Deerskin Lodge on a day-to-day basis wouldn’t have known there was rat poison available. Or known where to find it.
“Reeson is the only candidate.”
Darkness tightened around my vision like a noose, but I still saw Reeson get to his feet. Ginny flung her chair back to face him, but she was too slow. He picked up her revolver. Just for a second, he smiled at it disapprovingly, as if it weren’t good enough for him. Then he reached into his vest and brought out his own gun.
I recognized it right away. It was one of the guns missing from the dining room, a Ruger .357 Magnum. The kind of weapon that can powder your bones and spray your blood for ten yards in all directions.
When he pointed it at her, Ginny froze. I would’ve frozen myself, but I was already immobilized. If I took my weight off the wall, I’d crumble.
“You don’t think very highly of my intelligence, Axbrewder,” he commented amiably. “I’m the one who first suggested the wine cellar. Why did I do that, if I wanted something out of it? Why didn’t I get the rat poison before I let you put Abel in there?”
“You didn’t know you’d need it.” My voice came out of the wind. “But that’s not the main reason. Mostly you wanted to frame Simon—make him look guilty when he broke out, so that we wouldn’t think of anything else. And if we hadn’t already locked him up, you couldn’t have broken through the wall to get the poison. That would’ve been too obvious.
“Professionals don’t usually take chances, but of course that isn’t always true.” Now that I’d started talking, I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to. Once the room began to turn, I had to ride the spin until it ended. “They need opportunity, just like the rest of us. When you saw Simon go out for a walk, you grabbed an opportunity.
“You were already outside with that rifle, watching the lodge for a shot at me. You’d already taken the guns, mostly to create confusion, make everyone look guilty—but also so that your weapon couldn’t be traced to you. The random assortment was a smoke screen. You wanted the killer to look like someone who didn’t really know what he was doing, an amateur.
“Simon gave you part of your chance. You knew he was one of the actors—you handled the reservations for Murder on Cue. Once you saw Cat and me in the parlor, you had everything you needed.”
With every angle and muscle, Ginny focused on Reeson.
“But Simon’s window was latched,” I continued. “That didn’t leave you much time. You had to run inside by one of the back doors and go out through his window. Then you shot at me and hit Cat instead. So you dumped the rifle in Simon’s closet and left again, leaving the window open—another ploy to make him look guilty. And you didn’t have time to do anything else.
“So you took a chance. That’s OK. You’re smart—you took a smart chance. You’re just not a very good shot. So now you had to arrange another opportunity.
“That’s why you pulled down the phone line, disabled the vehicles. To give yourself an excuse to go for help. Only you didn’t go anywhere. You hiked out of sight and then sneaked back. When you were sure the way was clear, you reached the lodge and got up on the roof. From the roof, there’s probably a way into the attic—and from the attic there are probably knotholes and gaps that let you watch some of the rooms. The den, anyway.
“The way this place is built, nothing creaks. We wouldn’t hear you up there.”
Reeson did me the courtesy of looking mildly impressed.
“My nap in the den gave you another opportunity. You broke Simon out of the wine cellar, killed him, and took the rat poison. You dropped the box down the chimney and packed it with snow. Then you carried Simon up into the hills, leaving a nice plain trail to make us think he was on the run. After that, you waited to see if you were followed. You wanted me, of course, but you didn’t mind getting Ginny out of the way while you had the chance. El Señor sure as hell wouldn’t object.
“Unfortunately after you shot her you didn’t get any more opportunities. You were out in the hills, and I was here. You waited for a while in case you got lucky again, like you did with Simon, but when the day was almost over and nothing solved your problem for you, you came back to tell us that we were about to be rescued. That way, you could be sure that you’d get another chance at me.”
Then I was finished. I’d come to the end of words. And I had no other weapons. The gale rushed closer, stalking me by increments, and I knew that I wouldn’t be on my feet much longer.
Fortunately Ginny took up the struggle. I’d given her time to recover her grasp of the situation. “Too bad you’re stuck now,” she put in grimly. “Everybody knows where you are. When you shoot us, they won’t need to guess who did it. Then you’ll have to kill them all. Or go on the run. And a hit man on the run won’t be much use to el Señor. In fact, he may decide to have you killed, just in case you think the cops might trade immunity for testimony.
“You’re out of opportunities, Reeson. Put the guns down. Give it up while you still can.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” His frown looked as secure as his grip on the guns. “After I shoot you, I’ll just yell for help. I’ll say you were shot through the window. Luckily Axbrewder was kind enough to pull up the blind. Before anybody questions me, I’ll go after the killer. When I come back with Abel’s body—not to mention his fingerprints on this gun”—he indicated the Ruger—“there won’t be anyone around to contradict me.
“Look at it this way. After wrestling for all these years with the things that haunt you, and not doing very well at it, you’ll finally be at peace.”
He had a point. I couldn’t deny that. If he gave a shout and then jumped out through the window, no one would ever know that the glass had no bullet holes. The rest would be easy.
I had to do something. This was my job, the work Ginny paid me for—this was why she had a partner in the first place. Whether she still loved me or not didn’t matter anymore. I was sick of all the things I blamed myself for, sick of being pushed around by circumstances, sick of making excuses. And I’d made a promise to myself.
I’d promised that I would get this bastard.
I had to do something.
Nevertheless I was helpless—which nearly broke my heart. At m
y best, I couldn’t have pulled out the .45 and shot Reeson before he killed both of us. On top of that, I didn’t have the strength to fight him, even if I could’ve reached him before he fired. The gale gathered in the room, and darkness squeezed my vision down to a tunnel barely big enough to include both Reeson and Ginny, and I was helpless.
Ginny was about to die because of me.
At that moment, I stopped being angry. The spin of the room carried all the fury out of my bones. El Señor and Smithsonian and Reeson no longer enraged me. I wasn’t even angry at myself.
I simply couldn’t endure letting Ginny die.
She slid her hand and her claw off the desktop into her lap and bowed forward as if she were beaten and couldn’t hide it anymore, I did the only thing I could think of.
I collapsed.
Rolling my eyes, I toppled toward the corner of the desk like a man in a dead faint.
It worked.
Damn near got us both blown away.
My tumble caught Reeson’s attention, snagged his eyes away from Ginny. Instinctively he lined up both guns on me. If I hadn’t been falling, he would’ve shot me then.
I only distracted him for an instant. But during that instant Ginny reached under the desk, found the Smith & Wesson .44 I’d discovered four days ago, and hauled it out.
In a voice like a gunshot, she yelled, “Stop!”
Reeson stopped. His weapons were directed at me, and she had an absolutely unobstructed shot at the center of his chest. That .44 was no Magnum, but at this range it had the power to drive his heart out through his back.
He didn’t know what I knew.
Too bad she didn’t, either. I hadn’t told her that the gun was empty—that I’d taken out the shells.
But he didn’t know, that was the crucial thing. With any luck at all, he might take five or ten seconds to figure it out. The .44 was a revolver. As soon as he got a good look at it, he would see that the cylinder held no shells.