The Truth Hurts

  I must be saying words, because she answers me.

  “Yes, tomorrow is fine,” I hear her say, apparently in reply to something I’ve told her. “We’ll wait for your instructions. Since you’re not his immediate family, is there anyone else you’d like me to call for him?”

  “No,” I tell her. “There’s no one else.”

  Gently, I set the phone down.

  I look toward Nate’s bedroom door, but there’s no light coming out from beneath it. I can’t bear to wake him to tell him this terrible news. I can’t bear even to be awake to know it.

  Oh, Steve, you had so little time to be a free man.

  He had such a sad, violent and limited life, and it didn’t seem likely to get much better, not at the heart of it, at the heart of him, not even with a massive infusion of money from his lawsuits. (Oh, I can’t bear to tell Tammi Golding, either—his lawyer, my friend.) Did anybody ever love him? Would anybody ever have? There’s no chance for that now.

  During our trip here, he gave me one glimpse inside of his current life when I asked him, “How is it for you, being free?” He was blunt. “It’s not a friendly world for people like me.”

  I get up from the desk, walk over to the bed, lie down again, bury my face in a pillow, and whisper into it, “I’m sorry, Steve, I’m sorry your whole life sucked.” I sob until I almost fall asleep, but just before that happens I am jolted awake by the realization that the sheriff’s department may not know that their “accident” report is now a homicide.

  I sit at the desk again, calling from the darkened bedroom.

  As I wait through several rings for the deputy sheriff to answer, I watch the movement of shadows on the thin white curtains I have pulled across a window. It’s the branches of the oak trees, dancing in a wind that has kicked up, a precursor to rain. I remember rain. We used to have some of that back home in Florida. Carrying the phone with me, I walk over and pull the curtains back. Then I tuck the phone receiver under my chin so I can raise one of the window panes to see if the air smells like rain and—

  “Hello?”

  “Florence, this is Marie Lightfoot.” I don’t even bother to apologize. “Do you know that Steve died at the hospital tonight?”

  “No,” she says, sharply. “Nobody told me.”

  “So it’s a homicide investigation now.”

  “Maybe. I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Maybe? I have something to ask you. The other Hostel members who were at that picnic the other night specifically asked Clayton Fisher not to talk to the police until they’d had a chance to be sure of their theories. They didn’t want to accuse the Templetons, any more than you want to, not until and unless they felt really sure of their facts. So I was awfully surprised that you already knew, and that Clayton had already been in to see you. Why do you think he did that?”

  There’s a long silence, long enough for me to ask, “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I can’t tell you that.” But then she can’t resist adding, sarcastically, “Maybe it’s because he thinks as highly of the Templetons as I do, you ever think of that? Maybe he just wanted to give me a chance to see what’s coming up against them.”

  “That’s not exactly an objective point of view, Deputy.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d think it was if you really knew them.”

  And you can lump it, if you don’t like it, is the meaning I infer from her tone. Someone less prejudiced in their favor might think that Clayton jumped the gun because he was convinced of their guilt. Someone might think that he didn’t want to take the chance that his white friends would chicken out of accusing their black civil rights compatriots. As smooth and forceful as that old banker is, he’d have known how to plant suspicion without appearing to personally accuse them.

  As she’s talking, I notice the second message, the one I ignored in the aftermath of learning of Steve’s death. Ordinarily, my heart might beat faster at the sight of what it says, as if what she’s saying in my ear isn’t enough to do that already. This message is also from Mo, judging by the look of the similar handwriting, and it says, “Can I talk to you? I’m the one who called you.”

  She called me? For a moment, I don’t get it. When did she call—?

  Oh, my God. So she’s the one!

  Three times in the past, I’ve had mysterious phone calls from some woman who never seemed to catch me when I was answering the telephone. It was always a brief, scared-sounding message hinting that my anonymous caller had something important to tell me about my parents.

  Recalling that voice, I think, yeah, could have been Mo.

  Soft voice. Shy, scared, deerlike quality. A southern accent that was perceptible even in the few words that were left in her messages to me. Yes, I can believe it was she.

  “Florence,” I interrupt. “I have something else to tell you. . . .”

  Somehow, afterward, I finally sleep.

  Something wakes me again. A smell of smoke? I look at the clock: 1A.M. A very strong smell of smoke, and getting thicker, worse. I cough, then cough again.

  Move, Marie!

  I struggle out of bed, calling, “Nate! Nate!” When I reach the door that separates our room, I feel it with the palms of my hands to see if there’s fire on the other side, but it is as cool as air-conditioning. I fling it open and call, “Nate, there’s smoke, wake up!”

  When he doesn’t get up from the bed in that room, I hurry over to shake him awake, only to find that he’s not even there. For a wild moment I fear that he has changed his mind and fled back to L.A. after all. No, that can’t be. I know now that he wouldn’t do that. I run back into my bedroom, throw on slacks over the underpants and long cotton shirt I wore to sleep, slip into sandals, grab my purse and my laptop computer, and head for the door to the suite.

  It is slightly warm but doesn’t have the heat of fire.

  I open it and look out into the hallway.

  There’s a thin layer of smoke floating up from downstairs. I hear a noise, a crackle, like flames.

  “Fire! Fire! Wake up!” I scream, and go pounding on doors to wake people. “Fire! Get up!” As the other guests start to come out, looking frightened and half-asleep, I head for the stairway. Halfway down I meet my cousin coming up. Even in the midst of greater shocks, I’m surprised to see that he’s fully dressed in the clothes he wore earlier this evening.

  “Nathan, is there a fire downstairs?”

  “It’s in Mo’s bedroom,” he says, looking frantic.

  “Oh, my God! Why were you down there?”

  He takes my hand, and as he’s running past me, pulls me with him back upstairs. “I was looking for a cigarette,” he says over his shoulder.

  “But you don’t smoke!”

  “After this day? Are you kidding? Anybody would start smoking again! I wanted a drink and a drag. I thought she’d have one.” When I look back down, he violently tugs at me, almost pulling me off balance. “Don’t go down there, Marie! We’ve got to get people to a fire escape, did you notice if there is one? There has to be one, doesn’t there?” He glances back at me again, looking anguished. “There were flames in her doorway, Marie! I couldn’t get in. I couldn’t get in to save her! We’ve got to get out. Everybody does. We’ve got to get everybody out!”

  “Nine-one-one?” I shout out at him in the increasing noise and chaos.

  “I called them! Get out now!”

  He pushes me toward a door that another of the guests has opened onto a fire escape at one side of the big house. I run toward it, thinking that Nate is right behind me. But when I step onto the wrought iron of the fire escape and turn back to check on him, he’s no longer there. “Nathan! Nathan!”

  “Go, go! Move! Let us out!”

  Other guests are crowding in behind me. I’m blocking their escape. There’s nothing I can do but start down.

  “Nathan!” I scream, looking back as I descend.

  We reach the bottom of the fire escape and now I see flames through th
e windows of the first floor. My God, it’s already out of control. Where is that rain I thought I smelled a little while ago? Nathan! Nathan! While other guests run away from the side of the building, I start to run around it, desperately looking for a way I can get back in. The flames haven’t reached the second floor yet; there’s time . . . plenty of time . . . I know it, I know it . . . for him still to get out. What’s he doing in there? Why did he go back? Was there some other guest he was trying to save?

  “Nathan!” I scream, and I realize I’m sobbing it.

  I run around the other side of the house, nearest Mo’s bedroom, where the heat is greatest, where the shadows are thickest from the trees that shelter the house. In the near distance I hear a siren. Hurry, hurry! I can’t get in this way! I can’t find a way in anywhere! The heat is intense, the smoke is becoming blinding. If I don’t leave this area, I could lose my orientation and actually run toward the fire by mistake. While I still can see where I’m going, I turn toward the deeper shadows and stumble into them.

  When something grabs me, at first I think it’s tree branches.

  Only when the grasp tightens painfully do I realize it’s human arms.

  “Nathan,” I sigh, in relief. “Thank God you—”

  A hand comes over my mouth. I feel myself lifted, then carried, and more swiftly than I would have imagined possible—so quickly I can only think of killers I have written about and how fast they moved when they caught their victims, too fast for most people to have time to think, to react, to resist—I feel myself flung into a vehicle, a backseat. Hands grab mine, hands grab my feet. I am bound before I can kick, before I can claw. Tape is slapped onto my mouth and over my eyes. I feel my tied wrists lifted and something attached to them. The same thing happens to my ankles. When I tug, I feel myself trapped at both ends of my body, unable to do more than squirm and make grunting noises. That movement results in a horrible blow to my shoulder. The message, though not spoken, is excruciatingly clear: Shut up and stop moving. Fuck you, I think, and keep grunting my animal noises through the tape, through the awful pain in my shoulder, my limbs. I keep squirming, moving. Maybe there’s something I will hit with my movements, something that will make a noise, alert other people, get me help—

  The next blow is terrible and repeated three times.

  I would scream with pain, but I can’t.

  If I cry, I may not be able to breathe. I cannot cry at this pain.

  He’s getting his wish, whoever he is. I subside. I lie still.

  I feel something thrown over me that covers me from head to foot, a blanket or something even heavier, a tarp.

  33

  Marie

  For what seems an endless time, I hear chaos.

  Then there are sirens, shouting, more sirens. From the sounds of it, a fire is being desperately fought.

  I am left alone in this vehicle.

  When I recover enough from the shock and agony of the blows, I try to move, to make enough noise to be heard, but it’s useless. There’s too much noise outside, no one will hear me.

  I give up and lie there, concentrating on getting air through my nose.

  After a few minutes to recover, I try to escape again. And then again. I keep trying until I finally have to admit to myself that I am captured, and there’s not one damn thing I can do about it.

  Paulie Barnes, I think, as I lie there.

  I guess I am going to meet you, at last.

  There’s time to think, if only I can get my fear-soaked mind to calm down a little bit. There’s time to go back over everything that has happened since only last week, to remember the E-mails, the surprises, the threats, the coercion, the fear. But out of all of that jumble of remembering, only one new thought emerges: logically, there are only a few reasons I can think of why the deputy sheriff “couldn’t tell” me why Clayton Fisher previewed for her that material about my parents’ deaths. If he was there only to make sure the Templetons got accused, as I first suspected, I don’t really think she would have been fooled by his suave attitude. She’s so protective of them that surely even Clayton would have gotten her defenses up. So what did that leave as possible reasons for his surprising visit? It occurs to me now that he could have told her something incriminating that she couldn’t reveal because it wasn’t proven yet, or he could have told her something she couldn’t reveal without exposing him as the source of the information. What was that wily old banker doing? Was it just a small power play, jumping the gun to show he still held the reins in town? Or is there something he knows that he didn’t want his friends to hear? And then it hits me: as the main banker and loan granter in town, Clayton would always have known who owned pickup trucks, and who owned land with woody areas, and who owned property with caves on it.

  There was a pickup truck in his own driveway last night, an old one that looked as if he kept it around only because he had some affection for it. I’d be surprised if he actually drove it anymore; he and Eulalie surely prefer the new black Cadillac that was parked next to it.

  Half the men—and some of the women—in this town no doubt have always owned pickup trucks and not just the rednecks, either. But not all of them would own land outside of town.

  I’m sweating under the heavy plastic tarp. I’m worried about Nathan and whether or not he got safely out of the fire. It’s almost more than I can do to try to think my way out of this, but if I can’t move, I don’t see how I can fight my way out of it. If my captor ever lets me loose, my limbs will be stiff, the blood will have run out of them, my throat will be raw from all the smoke I’m breathing in through my nose. I’ll be lucky if I can walk, much less run or kick or scream. Think, Marie. It’s the only defense I have right now. But at least if I die, I’d like to know who killed me, and why.

  I remember something that Steve said back in Florida around the time that all of this began, hundreds of years ago. He said I was probably going to be safe, for a while, because there was still the book to write. But he warned me that eventually Paulie Barnes would attempt to separate me from everyone who might be able to help me.

  And that is just what he has done.

  “He’s very efficient,” Steve warned us.

  Right again.

  When my captor comes back for me, I cannot see him.

  I can only listen as a door in this vehicle opens, as he gets in and arranges himself on the seat, which I take to be the driver’s. I hear him starting the engine.

  I hear and feel us driving off.

  He says nothing, whoever is at the wheel.

  It seems we drive forever. At moments, that’s all I want to do, just keep driving so that I never have to find out what awaits me at the end of this long ride.

  But finally, as things must, I sense the end coming.

  We have traveled over paved roads, and then over a rough road.

  He stops the vehicle. I still don’t know for sure what it is. Car? Truck? I think it’s a truck, partly because of the sound the doors make when they close. And also because there’s a faint smell of diesel fuel, although that could be a diesel Mercedes, but there’s also a feeling of greater size than a car. As he drove, I heard a constant rattling of metal, as if something was rolling around in a flatbed, and there seemed to be a louder, more hollow noise under the tires on the road.

  I hear him open his door. Get out. I don’t hear it slam shut.

  He’s leaving his door open. Why? So he can leave fast?

  It’s a shock to hear the door closest to my head open, such a shock that my whole body retracts from it. I pull back instinctively against my bonds, as if I might be able to withdraw from what comes next.

  His touch on my body.

  He pulls at me, yanking my whole body across the rough floor, hurting me with every movement, until he can grab me well enough to pull me out entirely into cool air and soft rain. He stands me up and then abruptly lets go of me. My limbs numb and paralyzed by my bindings, I fall hard to the ground, screaming inside my taped mouth at this ne
w, shocking pain.

  Down on the ground, he rips the tape from my mouth.

  My eyes are still covered so I cannot yet see who he is.

  Rough hands grab me under my arms and pull me up again, and I fight to keep my balance. I smell sour breath. I smell cigar smoke. I’m standing now, but dizzy, in pain, afraid of falling hard again. And then I do fall, crying out.

  “Christ, unleash her,” a man’s voice says.

  Oh, God, I know that voice!

  Then in what seems like one blinding movement, the tape is torn from my eyes. I feel a touch of metal against my ankles, and then suddenly my legs are free. I feel another press of metal against the inside of my right arm, and then my hands spring loose.

  “Get up,” the same voice commands.

  I stand blinking in darkness.

  I am in a field bordered by thick woods.

  And I see that Paulie Barnes is not one man but three.

  Marty Wiegan, Austin Reese, and Lackley Goodwin.

  They are the reason why Clayton Fisher went alone to see the deputy.

  It was Franklin who said maybe it’s more than one man.

  Now I finally get it, the importance of the John D. MacDonald book, the “clue” in the book that Aileen Rasmussen kept harping at me to figure out.

  It was all in the title, I didn’t even need to know anything else.

  These are The Executioners of my parents.

  Lackley Goodwin, looking gaunt as a cancer victim in the final stages, asks me, “Do you know where you are?”

  I look around me, try to answer, but start coughing and cannot speak at first. Finally, I say, “How am I supposed to know that?”

  One of them steps up and turns me roughly around, 180 degrees, and then gives me a little push in the middle of my back. Just as I lose my balance and scream out, a hand grabs my arm, pulling me back to an upright position. I had felt as if I was about to fall into space, and now I see why: he has pushed me up to the very brink of a hole in the ground, a dark drop-off.