by D. J. Butler
In the moonlight, it looked like an SUV. My heart sank. That wasn’t the cavalry. It was more hostile Indians. And I know that’s not politically correct, but it’s what I thought. Cut me some slack—I was under a lot of pressure.
“Get slowly up the driveway,” Indra directed me, and I did, past the left turn and past Evil’s GSX that was still parked there.
The H3 that was canary yellow by day looked brown under the quarter moon. “Stop here,” Indra said. We were still well short of the house. “And get out. Not you,” he added, looking at Sheriff Sutherland.
“Checking in with your co-conspirator?” the sheriff challenged him.
Indra just snorted again and followed me out into the night. Inside the house, only a couple of lights were on—bedroom and kitchen, I thought. I didn’t see Marilyn, but she must be here.
“Walk straight up to the door in the side of the garage,” Indra told me. “No sudden moves, and you’ll see your boyfriend again.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Break my heart.”
The garage door was on the straight exterior wall of the house, and I noticed now as I approached that this side had very few windows. I reached the door and stopped, and Indra came right behind me. “See?” he grinned. “No motion-activated lights on this side of the house. Oops. That’s what you get for taking all that south-facing windows crap too seriously.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The sheriff is right. I should be getting out of here as fast as possible. But I haven’t done the one thing I really came here to do yet. So we’re making a short stop here, but it will only be a minute.”
He tested the doorknob, but it didn’t turn. A quick shoulder thrown against the door knocked it open, though, and he pushed me in ahead of him.
In the garage were a Tesla Model S and a charging station; that must be Aaron Wilding’s car. There was also space for the H3, and lots of sporting equipment—kayaks, backpacks, a pair of snowmobiles sitting on a trailer, and so on.
Indra pushed me toward the two steps up and the door into the house. I could see them by the strong glow of the garage door opener button, set into the wall right next to the door.
He prodded me and I opened the door and walked through.
I found myself standing in a narrow hall. The wooden walls and stone-tiled floor matched what I’d seen before in the Wilding house interior, but I was disoriented enough that I wasn’t sure where I was relative to the kitchen or the bathroom I’d used. Light shone around the frame of a doorway to my right.
“Shh,” Indra Wilding said as he pushed me toward the light.
It was like a creepy horror film, and I was walking down the dark passage to the mysterious, unexplained light that kept appearing at night in the unused attic. Only there was no ghost behind the door, no demon, it was Marilyn Wilding. The monster was on my side.
Money didn’t seem to be what Indra was after. So it had to be revenge. He hated Marilyn, and he was going to do something to hurt her.
And what did he hate Marilyn for? What was the odd secret room with all its bears for? Why was it meaningful for Indra Wilding?
“Marilyn!” I yelled.
Indra cursed under his breath and I felt his foot kick me suddenly in the backside. I staggered forward, knocking the door open as I crashed through it.
On the other side of the door was a sitting room or a library. I saw bookcases and a TV screen, and I saw Marilyn staring at me over the barrel of a shotgun as I tumbled to the floor and lost sight of her in my spinning.
“Rebecca McCrae?” I heard her ask.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The shots were not from Marilyn Wilding and her shotgun. They came from Indra, and Marilyn Wilding re-entered my vision as a corpse, thudding to the floor beside me.
I staggered out to the truck. You’d think seeing another murder might have left me in shock, but instead my mind raced at a million miles an hour. Indra Wilding had killed his stepmother right in front of me.
It was my fault. No, not really, but I felt as if it was my fault—Marilyn had been expecting Indra to come for her, and she had been armed. But when I had shouted to warn her, it had knocked her off-guard instead, and Indra had killed her.
She had expected him to come kill her, and he had done it. What was between them, exactly? What had driven Indra Wilding to murder?
And now he was going to kill me.
I needed a way out.
If I ran, I’d be leaving Sheriff Sutherland behind. He sat in the back seat of his truck, glaring at Indra through the wire mesh that contained him as we came out of the house.
I got into the truck first and shut the door.
While Indra circled the hood to get in on his side, gun pointed at me through the windshield, the sheriff spoke in a low voice. “My hands aren’t cuffed. That jackass didn’t test the tightness, so I just left them loose and I’ve pulled my hands through. There’s a Leatherman in the cup holder. If you can shove that back to me through the cage, I can get myself out of the truck.”
Then Indra pulled the door open, and Sheriff Sutherland raised his voice. “Marilyn’s dead now, isn’t she?”
“She deserved it.”
“I don’t see how you think you can benefit from this. You’ve cut your way through this town like a bad samurai movie, leaving corpses all over. You think you can just put a suit on now, walk into court like nothing happened, and inherit the ranch?”
“I’m not going to inherit.” Indra pointed to the little road forking away from the driveway; it wasn’t the one that led to Charlie Herbert’s house, because that exited the other side of the vale. “Drive,” he said to me.
“So what’s this about, then?” the sheriff asked. “Revenge?”
“Revenge makes it sound like I’m the bad guy.”
“I don’t know about good guys and bad guys,” Sheriff Sutherland said. “At least, not in my professional capacity. I know about people who obey the law, and people who don’t. Guess which category you fall into.”
“I’m justice,” Indra said.
Sheriff Sutherland snorted.
“The ancient Greeks knew that the polis, the city-state, couldn’t guarantee justice. They thought it was up to the gods. When someone needed punishing and there was no good human agency to do it, no king or no judge, the gods sent furies after that person.”
“Yeah? What was Charlie Herbert’s big sin? Dope? Being a loner? Not shaving?”
“I didn’t kill Charlie,” Indra said. He looked out the window at pines trees crawling past in the darkness. “I rather liked him.”
If I’d had two usable hands, I’d have snatched the Leatherman at that moment. But I was driving with my left, and couldn’t reach across my own body to grab the little tool. I bit my lip and kept driving.
“So who was your accomplice?”
“I don’t have an accomplice. I have only an oath-breaking sister who is trying to stop me, and enemies.”
“Nick,” I said. “The second man who was in dad’s office the other night was wearing a deputy’s uniform. He’s the one who shot Charlie. It was Nick, wasn’t it? He was about the right size, with dark, curly hair. He knew there was a second will, a will that disinherited Marilyn, and he was trying to stop Charlie from delivering it. Or maybe he was trying to scare Charlie into revealing where it was, and he accidentally killed him. And then you shot him.”
“Well, I know you didn’t come here to kill the boy toy,” the sheriff grunted. “He was innocent when you got here.”
“He wasn’t innocent,” Indra said. “But he wasn’t my accomplice either, and I didn’t come here to kill him. I came here to kill his lover, and now I’ve done it.”
The road crested a small rise and straightened out. Indra looked out the window again, and I saw my moment. Bracing the steering wheel with my left knee, I snaked my left arm across my body and grabbed the Leatherman.
The sheriff might have seen it. He didn’t let on
.
“Your justice has a pretty scattershot aim,” the sheriff said. “You shot Bucky here. Banged that kid Patten over the head. Killed your mother’s boyfriend.”
“She wasn’t my mother.” Indra Wilding’s voice was bitter.
The trees faded from sight at the edges of the headlights’ glow. We were in a big meadow, and ahead I saw the dark outline of a boxy building and a smooth path in front of it. Then I realized where we were.
“This is an air strip,” I said.
Sheriff Sutherland kept right on talking. “You killed a couple of men today, too. Real commando style, impaled one right in the center of the chest and just about chopped the other one’s head off. You don’t seem like justice to me so much as a rabid animal, running crazy and biting everyone it can get its teeth on.”
“Maybe I’m not rabid,” Indra said. “Maybe I’m the dog who’s been kicked too many times and finally bites back.”
“Bullcrap,” the sheriff said. “You waited until your dad was dead, and then you came up here and started killing people. You didn’t want to inherit, so…what? You wanted to stop Marilyn Wilding from inheriting? What did she do, take away your pony? Make fun of your name?”
“Indra is a storm god,” Indra said. “He’s the god of victory, and the bringer of the sun, like Yahweh in the Bible. He is the mighty one, who makes war, who frees the oppressed. He brings justice.”
“Jeez,” Sheriff Sutherland said. “I wish your dad had named you Grover.”
“She didn’t take away my pony. Until my dad sent me away to boarding school, she abused me.”
I felt very tiny. The road I followed blended into the beginning of the paved airstrip itself, in a pool of asphalt around the corner of the hanger. In the glare of the headlights, I saw a big garage-style door, only bigger, that the airplanes must go through, and the smaller entrance on the side. I put the truck into park.
“Oh,” I said. “Bears and swimsuits.”
Indra looked at me sharply. “Bears and swimsuits. You saw.”
I just nodded.
“Abused.” The challenging, belligerent tone of Sheriff Sutherland’s voice dropped away, and now he just sounded serious. “Let’s be clear about this. Do you mean she beat you? Didn’t let you take the family car out on prom night?”
“I mean she raped me.” Indra’s voice was cold, but in the reflected light of the headlights I saw a trail of tears down both cheeks. “She and the boyfriends she always had, right from the beginning. Nick wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t have been the last. Marilyn used me, and she gave me to her friends.”
“Bears and swimsuits means what?” Sheriff Sutherland asked.
“There’s a room,” I told him. “You missed it because it’s behind a secret door.”
“I see you’ve been busy,” the sheriff said.
“It’s a room where bad things happened.” Indra’s jaw was clenched so tight I could barely understand his words.
I choked. “What about your dad?”
Indra nodded. “Eventually he sent me away. He sent Rainbow away first, once he realized what was going on.”
“But he didn’t turn Marilyn in?”
“He loved her. He was a very smart man, about many things. But he was stupid about women. And about his heart.”
“You know what you’ve done is still murder.” Sheriff Sutherland’s voice sounded different, and it took me a second to recognize what it was.
Compassion.
He sounded sorry for Indra Wilding.
“Justice will come for me too. Justice comes for everyone.” Indra looked at me. “Get out of the car.”
Then he turned and opened his door.
I pivoted and shoved the Leatherman through the mesh into the back seat. I didn’t hear it hit the floor, so maybe the sheriff caught it, but I wasn’t looking. Instead, I turned the car off and stepped out.
I left the keys in the ignition. I didn’t know what Sheriff Sutherland could do with a Leatherman, but he seemed to have a plan. Maybe the truck would be useful to him.
The night was getting cold—a stiff breeze blew down across the Ups and toward Howard.
“I don’t know how to fly a plane,” I said.
“I do.” Indra pointed the Glock at me. “Come on, into the hangar.”
I walked the way he indicated, but slowly. “Well then, go. You don’t need me.”
“I do need you,” he said. “Until I’m sure I’m safe and no one’s following me, you’re my insurance policy.”
“You mean hostage.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“That’s not funny. You’re joking about my life.”
“You’re right,” Indra agreed. “None of this is funny. None of this is funny at all.”
He opened the door to the hangar and pushed me inside.
It was dark as pitch inside, but Indra knew his way. He walked straight to a light switch on the wall and flicked on long rows of overhead fluorescent lights. At the same panel in the wall, he also hit a button that started a motor overhead. The motor growled and whined, and the hangar’s big bay door started climbing up.
There was an airplane in the hangar. I don’t know airplanes any more than I know yachts or steam trains, so all I can tell you is it was small, and had a single propeller on the nose.
“Get in,” Indra said. He opened the door, dropped down a small ladder, and then hoisted me up into the cab of the plane by my belt.
I scooted across the pilot’s seat to the shotgun seat on the right.
“Grab that strap.” Indra pointed.
I looked; the strap was a loop of vinyl on the right side, like you’d hang onto to brace yourself for turbulence. “Across my body?” I asked.
“I didn’t say it would be comfortable.” Indra poked me with the Glock.
I grabbed the strap.
From his pocket he pulled out a clear plastic zip tie. It was industrial-sized, more like a rope than a zip tie. Setting his pistol on the seat and kneeling next to it, he threaded the zip tie around my wrist and through the hand strap, tying me in place. Then he yanked the zip tie tight. Even shifting my weight around onto my right hip, it still felt as if my left shoulder was being slowly pulled from its socket.
Indra shut the door behind him and started manipulating the plane controls.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Checking ailerons and fuel gauges,” Indra snarled. “Warming the carburetor, getting ready to take off. Why? You have an opinion on how I operate the plane all of a sudden?”
I shut up.
“Hey!” A shout broke into the gentle clicks and whooshes made by the plane controls as Indra got the vehicle ready for take-off. I knew the voice. It was Rainbow’s man, Burt. I tried to turn and look, but couldn’t crane my head past my shoulder.
In response, Indra started shooting. Glass shattered, and then I heard answering fire from Burt’s gun.
The plane shuddered as bullets hit it.
“You promised!” Burt shouted. “Half, you said!”
“I lied!” Indra shouted back.
I heard another racket of answering fire from the Glock, and then a click as its magazine came up empty.
The thud of feet running across concrete.
“Stop!” I yelled. I knew what Burt must not have realized.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Indra Wilding had more than one gun.
I heard a heavier thud and a clatter, and I knew that Burt was dead.
“Idiot,” Indra snarled. “That was completely unnecessary.”
“Then why did you shoot him?” I meant to ask it calmly, but it came out with a slightly manic edge to my voice. “Wasn’t he your ally? Your partner?”
“Rainbow was my partner!” Indra shouted. His voice was much louder than it needed to be to be heard over the sounds of the plane. “We swore, the night before she left home, that when Dad died we’d come back and kill that bitch!”
“But then you called
her and she backed out,” I realized.
“Said she was older and wiser,” Indra snorted. “So I played along. And Burt was supposed to keep her out of the scene, at least until I had arranged things for us. For her. He stopped being my ally when he showed up and went after the will.”
The plane moved forward.
“What would he want the will for?” I asked.
“Who cares?” Indra shot back. “Blackmail? Hold it against me? Sell the will to Marilyn?” He laughed, his voice falling apart in a maniacal cackle. “It doesn’t matter now!”
I couldn’t bear looking out the right window at nothing, so I twisted in my seat. Kneeling and facing backward, I could see Indra, driving the plane forward onto the runway with a grim smile on his face.
“FAA regulations require you to wear a seatbelt,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told.”
I looked past him, and at what I saw, my heart jumped into my mouth.
The sheriff’s truck was rumbling forward. Its headlights were off, but I could see it clearly in the light coming from the hangar. Indra might not have noticed it, focused as he was on the runway.
And beyond the truck, coming up from the Wilding house, were the headlights of two cars. As the first slowed and turned to drive onto the airstrip, it was clearly silhouetted in the headlights of its companion. It was a black SUV.
The plane bumped and jostled from side to side a bit, like a jock shouldering his way through a crowded hallway. Indra turned the plane and rolled forward, and then the lights of the hangar were behind us, and ahead was a long meadow, barely visible under the shrinking moon.
“You can’t even see the runway,” I said.
Indra shrugged. “I think I know where it is.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then I crash and burn into the trees. Isn’t that a fitting end for a specter of divine justice? Like a meteorite, that crashes to earth, does the work of heaven, and is itself consumed.”
“What does that make me? Stardust?”
“It makes you a necessary sacrifice.”
“You've been reading too much,” I said, “and the wrong kind of books.”
“You really ought to sit down. But suit yourself.” Indra clicked his own shoulder belt into place and accelerated down the runway.