As I made some sketches on the locations I'd recommend for installation of motion activated micro-video cameras for both daytime and night security, I heard the first rumbles of thunder off in the distance. Come on rain, I thought.
A thorough check of the second floor and the main floor confirmed there were no security cameras there, either, so I identified strategic locations for installing them.
All access and egress was through the main door. It was the only door, and it was wired with an alarm system, but not a stateof-the-art one. I was definitely going to recommend a connected series of infra-red sensors for the entire interior. Also, I made a note to have someone come out to check the Mill's fire-protection measures. I didn't see any safeguards worth mentioning.
By now, Priscilla's big tour was over. There were only a few stragglers left around the spinning wheel. Priscilla was showing them how frontier housewives had done carding. It was a Chinese puzzle to me, and I felt a rush of thankfulness for those pioneer women and their ingenuity.
I interrupted to inform her I was leaving and would file the security report with Don tonight.
Not far from the door, I spied the stairs going down to the lower level, well hidden by a display of handmade wreaths for sale. I'd forgotten the basement.
I skirted the display and descended the old wooden stairs. The basement was approximately forty feet long by fifty feet wide and very dimly lit. Hanging above the stair risers was a collection of ice saws used in frontier winters to cut into the thick ice of Salt Creek. They were huge and ominous looking and reminded me of the instruments of some mutant dentist. Frankly, they gave me the chills.
Along one wall was a mass of big gears and pulleys reminiscent of the intricate inner mechanism of a huge clock. I watched them turn in various directions. Some were ten feet across, going very slowly. Others were only a foot across, speeding faster and faster to pull the larger ones along. Closer examination showed the gears to be all wood, with wicked looking pegs, sharpened by time. These visible gears meshed into dark recesses of still other gears. The ninth circle of hell couldn't be more frightening, and they didn't bear looking at.
I took a few notes. The six windows down here were very small and very high, not large enough for a body to fit through. I was certain that no one could break into the Mill at this sub-level. If blocked off from the first floor, I could easily fathom hidden slaves spending part of a night in their dangerous, awful journey in the underground railway.
I put away my notes. It was time to go. A loud crash of thunder confirmed my decision. The storm must have finally broken. Suddenly I realized the Miata was sitting in the parking lot with her top down. In the rain. Shit!
I ran up the old stairs two at a time. As a flash of lightning and another loud clap of thunder shook the old mill, I ran right into Martin Sweeney.
THIRTY-SIX
There is no hunting like the hunting of man.
-ERNEST HEMINGWAY
MARTIN'S LIPS CURLED As he shoved me down the stairs. A clap of thunder buried my scream. Was this Auntie's storm warning?
He jumped down the rest of the stairs and grabbed me, covering my mouth and nose with one big hand. I poked him with an elbow and tried to grab my cell phone from my purse. He knocked the purse from my grip then held down my arms with his other hand. He was big, and strong. I kicked and fought to regain my balance. Sensei would kill me if he knew.
Suddenly the lights went out, and we were in complete darkness.
"Anyone still down there?" Priscilla the Pioneer called from the top of the stairs.
I tried to scream. Martin tightened his grip and pushed me into a small recess under the stairs. I struggled. His hold got tighter. My vision started to go black. I was afraid I was going to pass out.
"We're closing now," Priscilla called. I could hear her descend the stairs. One, two, three steps down. Everything was so completely black that my eyes hurt searching for some light.
"Is anyone down here?" Bless her little pioneer heart, she had a flashlight and arced the beam back and forth across the gears and along the floor, missing us by inches. I struggled and squirmed, trying to bite and kick but made no headway against Martin's strength.
Please Priscilla, don't give up. I had no doubt that if she spotted us, together we could handle Martin.
I got one leg free and tried again to kick, but Martin wrapped a leg around my lower torso and my legs started to cramp.
Priscilla hesitated an instant, then retreated up the stairs. One, two, three steps up. She might as well have been in the next galaxy. When I heard the clang of the big lock on the main door, I knew she'd gone. My heart sank. I stopped struggling. Martin and I were alone in the dank basement. No one was going to hear me, let alone help me.
My body sagged with terror. Martin must have felt it. He unwound his leg and relaxed his hold enough for me to catch a little air up my nose. I almost choked as I tried to swallow.
I tried to regain a foothold. The rhythmic pulse of the turning gears punctuated by lightning flashes made me dizzy. I was suddenly aware of inconsequential things like Martin's offensively sweet aftershave and his gray Nike running shoes. Still no socks, but gone were the loafers.
So it was Martin who'd been after me, and Martin who'd undoubtedly killed David and Beth and Mike Ekins, David's attorney. I knew he was going to kill me, too.
A strong desire for revenge produced a surge of energy. I ground my heel into his Nike and somehow broke his hold. I bolted for the stairs.
Martin was unexpectedly quick for such a big man, and he blocked my way.
"You've caused me no end of trouble, sister," he growled through his beard, looming up over me.
There was no way out of here except up those damn stairs. My heart pounded frantically as I tried to remember the layout down here. The windows were too high and too small, even if I managed to get up there. I was trapped and suddenly knew what the phrase panic attack meant. I was having one, and it took all my Scots courage not to whimper.
"I tried to warn you off, but you wouldn't listen," he said in a strange voice I hardly recognized. "You had to keep looking into things, had to take David's computer."
I wondered if finally the real Martin Sweeney had emerged. His nasty, staccato voice made goose bumps rise all over my body.
"I hate nosy broads the worst of all," Martin said, standing over me like the angel of death.
He lunged at me. I stumbled, trying to back away in the pitch black. I could hear him, close to me, breathing. I moved away from the stairs, feeling my way along the wall. In the dark quiet, the harsh sound of the meshing gears was louder than ever.
I was sweating, probably from fear as much as the heat and humidity down here. Did Mother Nature intend sweat to encourage or discourage the stalker? I tried not to think of myself as prey, a la Deepak Chopra, but it wasn't working.
"You've been a royal pain from day one when I hit you in David's apartment," Martin said nastily from somewhere in the dark. Without the lightning flashes, it was like Mark Twain's cave, as dark as the grave. "I was almost finished searching his place for anything that might lead the police to me when you arrived. I thought I killed you that day. But you've got nine lives, like some damn cat. Even managed to save yourself on the elevated stairs. Then your boyfriend played Sir Lancelot last night. Well, tonight, your lucky streak is at an end."
Martin's eyes glinted like a wolf's in the sharp glare of a lightning flash. My eyes were adjusting to the strobic effect, and I thought I spotted a tire iron in his right hand.
"You've been following me," I said.
"Didn't have to. Your little black appointment book had it all in there, neat as a pin."
My appointment book. I thought it was buried under the mess. I'd never suspected it had been stolen.
"Now let's get this over with," he said, and in the next flash I saw him lunge at me, his right arm raised.
I spun sideways, narrowly evading the blow. "Martin, please don't kill me."
"I'm not going to kill you," he said, laughing like he was on stage performing. "Ernest Hemingway would never kill anyone. But you could have a nasty accident. You could lose your balance on these old steps and fall down." He rushed me again, but I maneuvered past him. He was close now, too close, and he kept pushing me back toward the stairs.
"Ain't it a shame. They'll find you tomorrow and blame it on the storm and the lights going out."
I thought of Auntie's vision as he pushed me onto the steps. Oh God, she was right again.
"I like to think of what will happen to you more as an act of God. Heavenly risk management to protect Hemingway, you might say.
In the next lightning flash, he was grinning. There was absolutely no way I was going back up those stairs of my own free will. He was going to have to carry me up and then push me down if that's what he wanted. At least I'd give him some grief for all my suffering. I had no plan-only a faint hope that maybe I could stall him and gain a little ground. Trouble was, I didn't know what ground there was to gain until, in another flash of lightning, I saw the horrid ice saws on the wall under the stairs.
"You're getting to be awfully good at murder, aren't you, Martin? Is that part of Hemingway's macho image or just your own sick self coming out?"
"Shut up," he shouted.
"You're not going to get away with this, Martin."
His laugh reverberated in the heavy air. "I've already gotten away with everything, haven't I? I got away with killing David. I'm not even a suspect. I've got the manuscripts, and-"
"You've got them?"
"Surprised at how clever I am? You shouldn't be. They're well hidden. And after I prove to everyone that David faked those fragments, I'll be able to `find' them myself a few years from now. They'll be worth even more then. David got what was coming to him. Why should they fall into his lap like that? We were partners. We did all the research in Michigan together. But he cut me out, the bastard. I warned him."
I needed to keep him talking to buy a little time to maneuver. I opened my mouth to say something, but blessedly, he continued.
"I didn't want to kill him," he said. "But he was stubborn and selfish. He refused to share with me, the son of a bitch. It was all so easy for him. Always got what he wanted-fame, women, everything."
"Why did you kill Beth?" I asked.
"Had to. I found out David told her he gave me the manuscripts to look over. You have to go, too. That was clear from the start because sooner or later you might remember something from that day in David's apartment."
"Why did you kill David's lawyer?"
"I couldn't let him live because I wasn't sure exactly how much David told him. He was a threat. He had to go, for Hemingway's sake."
A deafening crash of thunder muffled Martin's words as he kept ranting. Another crescendo added fuel to his jealous anger and resentment, and I held out hope he'd grow careless and give me an opening.
"Those manuscripts are worth a king's ransom, and now they're all mine. I won't ever again have to dress up and be what David used to call the side-show dummy. Me, a dummy. He never understood that I was the real star of our show, not him. The audiences loved me. I was Hemingway. He didn't understand that. He shouldn't have tried to cut me out."
Martin kept shouting, repeating himself. Meanwhile, I circled round him, looking for a way to make a break for it.
"It was me they came to see, not him. Those manuscripts should have come to me"
A searing white light flooded the basement, accompanied by a deafening explosion and a crack of thunder. Hailstones began hitting the small windows. I was certain lightning had struck the Mill itself or somewhere close to it.
"Hemingway wouldn't have killed his best friend," I screamed.
I heard him move, and the next flash of lightning illuminated him poised over me with the tire iron. I tried to duck but wasn't fast enough. It hit me and bounced hard off my left shoulder. I collapsed with pain. For an instant, everything went black.
I struggled to stand but I couldn't. In another flash, I saw Martin grab the tire iron from the floor where it had landed after slamming into my shoulder. He was coming at me again, only this time I couldn't move.
I went limp, anticipating what was in store. Suddenly I heard Sensei's voice in my head. "Practice, practice." Somehow my body switched to automatic pilot. I rolled over to my left and heard the tire iron hit the floor where my head had been a millisecond earlier. I crawled to my knees in the darkness and stood up painfully.
Martin came at me again in a fury. I could hear him babbling. This time I blocked his blow with both my arms and managed to twist and slip out of his grip. I used my Aikido training and did a fly-away pivot and kicked out in the dark.
The blind kick landed in his groin. He groaned loudly.
I heard rustling as he gathered himself to run at me again. I crouched down, getting as close to him as I could estimate, balancing myself with one foot far out in front of the other. I took a deep breath, as Sensei had demonstrated in class.
With a shout, Martin attacked me furiously. I bent my knees and grabbed hold of him with both hands.
"Damn you," I yelled and powered by all my strength, fear, and rage, I leveraged my body and pulled him over my head. What happened was exactly what was supposed to happen. The combined vectors of his attack and my pull catapulted him over the waist-high fence directly into the huge turning wheel's meshing gears.
Martin landed on the sharp wooden spikes with a sickening, pulpy thud. His long, horrible scream crescendoed with the thunder. I covered my ears to escape the sound.
As the lightning continued to flash, I stared up from the floor in horror. Martin's body, sprawled across the turning wheel, was being meshed slowly and painfully into the farther recesses of the gears. After a time, the wheel ground to a sudden, horrid stop.
I sank back against the wall, nearly blacking out from the searing pain in my shoulder and hands. I watched the wheel give a final lurch, then lock up, holding tight its deadly remnants.
Something hit me in the chest and fell to the ground. In the next lightning flash, I bent to retrieve it. It was Martin's bloody Gott Mit Uns belt buckle.
THIRTY-SEVEN
DAY 6: FRIDAY
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in
the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.
-ERNEST HEMINGWAY
THE HEAT WAVE BROKE last night with the storm. Today was sunny and mild. I was sore as hell from the beating I took last night, but I felt snug and comfortable sitting in the Miata alongside Mitch, who was doing the driving. The car was still soggy in various places from last night's storm, but she was getting air-dried as we drove with the top down. Silently I wondered how long I'd have her after Poussant et al, at the IRS got done with me.
"This is a great car," Mitch said, "but I'm not used to this stick shift." He roughly up-shifted into fourth gear, speeding up to keep pace with Lake Shore Drive traffic.
We'd left in a big hurry after I'd explained everything to Tom Joyce, who'd called several times wondering what was happening. But I made up my mind that I wasn't going to be late for this meeting at the IRS, no matter what happened. Mitch had insisted on coming with me for support and courage, and that was more than okay with me.
He interrupted my reverie. "This is criminal, DD. You've been almost killed half a dozen times in the last couple of days, and this servant of the people, this officious jerk, won't even postpone the inquisition for one day."
I liked my man to be supportive, and Mitch had just gotten an A-plus, but I was nervous and wanted to change the subject.
"At least the check that Matt is sending me will cover some of my IRS payment." I realized I couldn't change the subject. The IRS was all I could think about.
"Boy, you got Matt steamed last night," Mitch remarked. "Those didn't sound like executive words to me."
I had let Mitch listen in to my conversation with Matt last night. I h
ad told Mitch the whole story about Matt, including the worst of it, and he was still gloating over the demise of his rival.
"He was sure pissed that you hadn't recovered the manuscripts. But I think he was even madder about your statement to the cops that you were sure they were really Hemingway. `The reserves for this fiasco will kill American's profits for years,"' Mitch falsettoed, paraphrasing Matt. "`My bonuses are down the tubes. It's what I get for dealing with stupid amateurs like you"'
"Yeah," I agreed, glad to finally be able to get myself out of the IRS rut. "I thought blood was going to spurt out of his ears when I told him how much he owed me. The bastard was ready to tell me where to put my invoice until I reminded him of the contract that Phil had put together at the start of this whole thing. I'll bet Phil's having some sleepless nights. I'm afraid to call him. Oh well, at least I'll get some money out of the whole awful deal"
"Didn't you talk to Phil last night?" Mitch asked.
"No. I called nine-one-one on my portable, and then later called Matt to cancel our meeting."
"DD, what do you think Martin did with those manuscripts? Do you think anyone will ever find them?"
"I wouldn't bet on it. Martin was a combination of a monomaniac and a miser, with a few other flaws thrown in for good measure. He was also smart. He put those manuscripts where they'd be safe but not easily found. Remember, his plan was to stash them away for a few more years before he rediscovered them. Now his secret's with him in his grave. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd bet against the firm Matt hired to find them."
"Why was Sweeney after you? Why did he kill Beth and David's lawyer? Why didn't he just lay low?" Mitch asked.
Silently I blessed him for keeping the subject off the IRS. Now I knew how condemned prisoners must feel. "I don't think Martin counted on a couple of things. He had planned on trashing David's computer and removing any information about the manuscripts. He counted on everyone believing him and writing off the manuscripts as fake. No one would look too hard for fakes. But he didn't count on American Insurance being interested, he didn't count on my walking in on him as he was finishing searching David's place, probably for a receipt he'd had to sign when David gave him possession of the manuscripts for safe-keeping. And he certainly hadn't counted on us taking David's laptop or on David telling Beth he'd given Martin the manuscripts. And at the last he told me he didn't know exactly what David had told his attorney but he had to kill him because David might have told him something important."
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