Poison Flower

by Thomas Perry

  She liked the fact that the building had two stories. The upper story would give her a chance to see what was coming toward her from a greater distance. Because she had driven into the Adirondacks to a place that got cold in the winter, it hadn't been hard to find houses of brick and stone built to hold up to the weather. They would also stop a bullet. This one she judged to date from the 1930s. It had a sloped cellar door that led down steps to a second, vertical door to a basement. The windows were all old-fashioned thick glass, all two-light, opening inward like little doors, secure on the inside and equipped with shutters. She could see through rooms to the inner sides of some of them, and they all had iron fittings so in the winter they could be barred with two-by-fours. The snow in the Adirondacks had been known to pile up to twenty feet, and the windows had been built to hold up against the weight and the winds. The roof had a steep peak to prevent snow and ice from building up and getting heavy.

  She took another look around, and then drove up the dirt road to the county highway, and then into Lake Placid to find the landlord. The owner turned out to be a young blond woman whose main business was a store that sold things summer visitors wore-high-end sunglasses; hiking boots; hats for keeping the sun out of the eyes; helmets and bright synthetic shirts and spandex shorts for those who rode the bikes hanging from the rack overhead.

  Jane walked in, saw that the blond woman was the only person in the store, and said, "You're Cora Willis, right I want to rent your house."

  "The cottage Don't you want to see it first"

  "I've seen it," Jane said. "I was just out there. I like it. My name is Janet Keller." She held out her hand and the other woman shook it. "In fact, I was surprised you weren't asking more for it."

  Cora Willis shrugged. "I get a lot more earlier in the summer. Usually I close it for the summer at the end of August, and then do whatever upkeep I need to do. There are plenty of years when the nights start to get cold by now. I should warn you about that-you could wake up one morning and find it's fall."

  "It's okay," Jane said. "I'm prepared. I saw it was empty, and I'd like to move in later today or tomorrow, if I can."

  "No reason not to. I don't need to wait for your check to clear. You seem honest."

  "I am. But I assumed you would be careful, so I brought cash." She counted it out onto the counter silently. "Is there a security deposit"

  "Uh . . . no," said Cora Willis. She went to a cabinet behind the counter and produced a rental agreement, a pen, and a key. She walked around her store hanging up clothes that had been left in the dressing room while Jane filled in her false name and address. When Jane was finished, Cora Willis glanced at the agreement as she put it into her computer printer and made a copy for Jane, signed it, and handed it to her. "You should have a nice, quiet time. I always do when I'm out there. My great-grandfather built it."

  "It's just right," Jane said. She walked toward the door. "Thanks a lot. I'll be back in two weeks to turn in the key."

  "Okay. If you forget, mail it to me. You're the last renter of the season, so there's no rush."

  Jane had not intended to move into the cottage right away, but she didn't want anyone around when she got there, and she needed to have the deal be a certainty, so she had started the rental period right away. She drove to Watertown and began to shop for the items she would need. She went to a military surplus store and bought a marine K-Bar fighting knife with a black blade; a blood gutter and a hilt to keep her hand from slipping onto the blade; a whetstone; some basic cooking utensils; a high-intensity flashlight; a camouflage tarp; and a hundred feet of rope.

  At a Target store she bought men's jeans, shoes, a shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, a box of rubber gloves, dishwashing detergent, and some sheets and blankets.

  She stopped at a copying and mailing store, where she rented a computer and sent Stewart Shattuck an e-mail. Stewart Shattuck was a highly skilled forger and a dealer in false identification with whom she had dealt a number of times over the years. "Stewart, I need a favor. Please make sure that a few of the wrong people find out that I asked you to mail me some new cards-maybe an e-mail acknowledgment that looks as though you accidentally hit `reply all' would do it, but you know best. Here is the address." She put in the address of the cottage near the lake.

  Jane waited nearly an hour before she received the reply: "It's done. If you have any doubts about this, don't ever go there."

  Near the mailing store was a party goods store. As she had hoped, the paucity of holidays in the latter part of the summer had forced the staff to lay out the Halloween costumes and decorations early. She went through the displays of masks until she found the one she wanted. It fit over the whole head and had close-cropped brown hair and a smooth complexion. The name on the label said "George Clooney mask." She bought it and a set of rubber hands and rubber feet.

  It was nightfall by the time Jane was finished with her shopping. She decided she was not ready to drive several hours to arrive in the dark at a dirt road to an unoccupied house. She drove to the entrance to Route 81, where she remembered there was a large, pleasant-looking hotel, and rented a room for the night. She went back outside to move her car to a spot in the parking lot where it was lighted and she could see it from her room, then went to sleep. She had gone to sleep so early that she awoke at four, then drove the four hours to reach the cottage by eight.

  Before she left the highway she refilled her gas tank. She had learned over the years that eluding pursuers was often a matter of tiny precautions, many of them no more esoteric than maintaining a full tank. Afterward she drove the rest of the way to the dirt road and up to the house, where she unloaded her supplies into the kitchen. Then she drove the car back along the dirt road to the highway, and then up the man-made trail she had found in her initial visit. She kept going past the distance where her car would become invisible from the highway, until she found the slab of rock. She parked the car on it, covered the car with leaves and branches, and then followed the trail the rest of the way to the small, calm lake and along the shore to the path that led up to the house.

  She locked the doors and began to deal with the supplies and equipment she had brought. She went upstairs and made the bed in the master bedroom, which was at the head of the stairs. Then she went down the hall and selected a second bedroom where she would sleep. There was a lot of work to do, and she had only the hours of daylight to accomplish it. She went downstairs, emptied a half dozen glass iced tea bottles into a pitcher, tied the bottles together with nylon fishing line, and set pairs of them along the upstairs hallway from the stairway to the second bedroom. If anyone came up here in the dark, he would set off a racket with the falling bottles, and very likely tangle himself in the fishing line.

  The men's clothing she had bought she filled with leaves, pine needles, and a few sticks, making the most realistic dummy she could. His head was the rubber pullover George Clooney mask filled with crumpled paper bags. His hands were the rubber hands from the party shop. She tried using the rubber feet, but ultimately settled on the shoes with the rubber feet stuffed into them, so the human-looking ankles could be seen. After several experiments with the dummy, she found that the best place for him was seated on the bed in the master bedroom with his back propped up on pillows, the small reading light on the headboard turned on behind his head so his face was in shadow, and a book from the bookshelf propped in his lap. She plumped up some pillows and put them under the covers so it looked as though a woman were asleep on the far side of him.

  From time to time Jane stopped her preparations and looked out each of the upper windows, standing still and silent as though frozen, watching the world around the house. She had no reason to imagine anyone could have found her this soon, but the men chasing her now were completely unknown to her. She had no idea what they could do. The thought reminded her that there were many more things she wanted to do before nightfall.

  She went to the unoccupied room just beyond hers, tied the rope to the steel frame of
the bed, took the screen out of the window, opened the window, and looked down. Directly below the window was clear grass, but on either side there was shrubbery.

  In the room she had selected for sleeping, she loaded her shotgun. She dragged the mattress off the bed and put it right at the door, then cycled the shotgun to put a double-ought shell in the chamber, and laid the shotgun on the mattress. She took ten more shotgun shells out of the box, put them in the pockets of her black jacket, and left the jacket there.

  She stood still, looked, and thought. The house was stone, impervious to gunfire except through the windows. If people got inside, they would search downstairs, and then they would climb the stairway to the second-floor hall. They might go to investigate the dimly lighted master bedroom where she had left the dummy, or they would come up the hallway and knock over the bottles. Either way, they would warn Jane. If she was stationed in the doorway on her mattress, she could fire eight double-ought blasts into the narrow, dark hallway, reload, and probably fire eight more. She made a few alterations. She adjusted the mattress so she could lie on it and fire, showing only her right eye and right shoulder to the intruders. She walked to the staircase, descended to the ground floor, and counted windows. There were eight. She went down into the basement and found the eight precut and painted two-by-fours, barred the shutters, and latched the windows.

  The front and rear doors each had an assortment of locks and dead bolts. She was a bit uncomfortable with them, because she didn't want it to be impossible to get in. She wanted the shooters to get inside. She wanted them to climb the stairs.

  Jane walked the paths through the woods and then among the man-tall reeds at the edge of the lake, memorizing the contours of the land and the marshy places. She stayed out while the sun went low and she could see the water of the lake as a copper-colored mirror shining through the foliage. She knew it was very unlikely that anyone could find her in one day, so she was in no hurry to fortify herself in the house. She walked the deer trails quietly, and heard the deer stir ahead of her, then go crashing through the underbrush and away. She walked out to the highway and stared into the trees to be sure she couldn't detect light emanating from the house. She walked along the grassy shoulder of the dirt road to the house so her footprints wouldn't show.

  She picked out landmarks as she walked. The tall pine that rose above the hardwoods stood about halfway to the house. The clearing where the trees had died out was three quarters of the way. As she walked, she heard something big moving through the underbrush, and she suspected it was a bear. She stopped to gauge the wind direction. It was blowing toward her from the lake, so she would probably be safe if she waited for the bear to move on. In a few minutes, she heard it moving off toward the water.

  She went inside the house and turned on the downstairs lights. The shutters were all closed, so the light could not be seen from a distance. She made herself some dinner, and washed the dishes. She went to the front door and disengaged the dead bolts. Then she went to the back door and did the same, but left the standard locks on each door locked. If she unlocked a door they would suspect the truth-that she wanted them to come in.

  She turned off the downstairs lights, climbed the stairs, and stopped at the top. She turned on her dummy's reading light in the master bedroom, shut the door, and made her way down the hall, stepping over the nylon fishing line tied to the bottles. She showered, brushed her teeth, and dressed for sleep. She wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, and her black jacket. She had a Beretta pistol in her pocket, and the K-Bar knife in its sheath at her back. The shotgun was on the mattress beside her. She lay there in the silence and darkness, and was surprised at how comfortable she felt, with all the physical work done, her hair and body clean, and lying on the firm mattress. It was only a few minutes before she was asleep and dreaming.

  16.

  In her dream, Jane did something she had done a hundred times during the day. She went to her open window and looked outside. This window faced in the direction of the lake. She looked out over the glassy black surface, and saw nothing but the undistorted reflection of the moon and a few stars. Near the shore, where the cold water met the warm earth, there was a layer of fog a few feet thick. She heard a faint sloshing sound and saw the tall reeds forty feet beyond the shore moving a little. A man slowly rose from under the lake and walked with slow determination among the reeds toward the shore, the fog hiding all but his human shape at first. As he approached the shore, the muddy water ran off his head and down his face in streams. He was wearing a coat, and water ran from the sleeves to make ripples on the surface. She knew him, and she felt a deep dread. He was dead because of the worst mistake Jane had ever made-Jane had once been fooled into leading a killer named John Felker practically to his door. And Harry didn't haunt her dreams to bring her good news.

  When the man was fully up and out of the water, he stood still for a moment, slowly raising his head to look up at her window as though he had heard her thinking. His eyes focused on hers. There were a few long, mossy strands of water plants on his shoulders. Without moving his eyes from Jane's, he reached up and brushed them off, then began to walk toward the house.

  Jane shut the window and barred it, then put her eye to the shutter and watched him walking toward the kitchen door. As he came, water ran down from his clothes, and his shoes made a squish noise with each step. He stopped on the slab of concrete at the back door, and she could see the wet footprints there. He looked up at her again for a moment as though determining whether she would come down to let him in. Then he simply opened the locked door and stepped inside.

  Jane slowly moved along the hallway and listened to the watery squish of his shoes as he ascended the stairs. He reached the top and stood on the landing. At his best, Harry Kemple had looked as though he had never cared for himself. He always wore the same sport coat with a very tight herringbone pattern. It must have started out gray, but the fabric had acquired a greenish tint, as though the years of poker table air thick with cigar smoke had reacted with the harsh light to work a chemical change. The elbows were a slightly lighter color because they were worn. He had a bony, unhealthy build, like a too-tall jockey, and his brown pants were too wide for him, gathered above his waist and cinched by a thin belt. His shoes looked as though he had sprayed them with floor wax and given them a varnish-like shine that preserved the scuffs.

  "Hello, Harry," Jane said.

  "I notice you didn't fall all over yourself to let me in."

  "You're a ghost, Harry. Doors don't present the problem to you that stairs present to me. I'm sure you know I've been shot."

  Harry nodded. "I know what you know. The nine--millimeter bullet missed the femur and the femoral artery, but it tore the muscle up a bit. In eleven months you'll be as fast as ever. . . ."

  Jane's heart beat faster. She couldn't believe the good news.

  ". . . If your body is still alive."

  "You always know how to raise my spirits."

  "You raise us yourself," he said. "Me in particular. I get no rest because I'm your mistake. The minute you took John Felker to see Mr. Shaw in Vancouver to get a fake ID, I was a dead man. I could still walk around while he stole Shaw's record of the IDs he'd made and found my new name and address. But I was already on Hanegoategeh's to-do list."

  "I wasn't being careless. I believed in John Felker."

  "Enough to spend the previous two weeks fucking him, like it was a honeymoon."

  "I was an idiot, Harry. I'm sorry. I've been saying it for fifteen years, and I know I'll never stop having these dreams." She reached out and touched his hand, but it was freezing cold from the mountain lake, and bloodless. She withdrew her hand, trying to hide her revulsion.

  "What You can't be surprised I feel like a dead guy."

  "No," she said. "I just forget all of that sometimes, Harry."

  He looked at her impatiently, then turned his head and looked over his shoulder, taking in everything around him like a man who has suddenly had a b
lindfold removed. "Oh, shit," he said. "You're the One Who Stops, aren't you You were running away with the other fighters, and you're the one who stops and fights. That's why you're way up here alone."

  "This is the place to do it," she said. "Nobody else can get hurt. The outer walls are stone, and the doors are split timbers. There won't be any innocent bystanders."

  "Oh, there won't be," he said. "Not the ones who are after you, and not you."

  "Innocent isn't what I want to be."

  He looked around again, and she was aware he was seeing through walls and floors. "So this is the spot where you're choosing to block the trail and fight to the death."

  "Not `the' death. Their death."

  "Do you know who and how many there are"

  "No. I'll know that when they come."

  "What part of the wars is this"

  "What do you mean"

  "Shelby and his sister don't know anything, and neither does Iris. But you know it's about Sky Woman's twin grandsons, the right-handed and the left-handed, Hawenneyu the Creator and Hanegoategeh the Destroyer. So whose work are you doing up here"

  "Hawenneyu's."

  "You've made sure that killers will come here for you, and that somebody is never going home. Can you kill for the Creator"

  "I think you can," she said. "If you stop the heart of someone who kills and kills, you can."

  "If you're sure, then before they come, do all your thinking. See everything from every direction and tell yourself every story of the fight. Plan what you'll do in every story, so when you see it beginning to happen, you can move. Trade your life for something. Don't throw it at them because you're angry."