Dead Creek

by Victoria Houston

  Another irrational memory flashed into his brain: Brad had the same petulant look of anger on his face that he’d had the day he threw the brand-new hundred-dollar muskie rod that Joe had bought him for his birthday into Loon Lake. The little shit hadn’t owned that rod more than twenty minutes before he threw it overboard, ruining the expensive reel. Osborne remembered that moment keenly, and he didn’t like seeing the identical look on the face of the person holding the gun.

  He shook off the searing pain across the bridge of his nose. He was more worried about Lew, lying beside him in a pool of blood. She had taken a blow to the back of her head that smashed her face into the floor, knocking her unconscious. Automatically, he reached to loosen the tape around her face and mouth. It pulled down easily, the tape loosened by the blood running out of her mouth.

  “Take your hands off her!” shouted Brad.

  “She’s unconscious, she’s going to choke on that blood—”

  “So? One less fat cow to worry about,” said Brad. “Get up, you old fool.” He kicked at Osborne, who let himself up slowly and backed off against a row of freezer doors that ran along the inside wall. As he stood up, Osborne could see Lew had hit hard enough that an incisor had jammed into her lower lip. He was relieved to see the blood was flowing out of her mouth and not back down her throat. The blood made the wound look worse than it was.

  He looked up to see the shock and fear in Erin’s eyes just as the sound of footsteps grabbed his attention. He turned to see Ray and Julie rushing toward them.

  “Doc? Doc? Are you all right?” Ray’s voice rang out loudly as the two of them rounded the corner into the freezer room. They skidded to a halt at the sight of Brad waving his gun.

  “Stop! Stop right there. Put the rifle down very slowly.” Brad’s eyes widened, and Osborne saw he was shocked at the sight of Julie. The pistol shook in his trembling hand.

  Ray set his rifle down carefully to one side, moved away from it, and raised his hands. “Fine, Brad. You see the gun. We’re not armed. It’s okay. We’re not armed.” His voice was calm, almost soft.

  Brad waved the pistol at Ray and Julie. “Down on your knees, both of you—no, not there—over by Doc.” Ray and Julie, their hands up, walked slowly toward Osborne.

  As they passed Brad, he grabbed the trout hat off Ray’s head and threw it in the corner. “Ha, ha, ha,” Brad cackled, though his eyes didn’t smile. They stayed flat and mean. “I’ve wanted to do that for years, you hick. You think you’re so cute. You must be one of most ridiculous idiots ever spawned in this shithole.”

  Ray watched the hat sail through the air and shrugged. “Gee, Brad, I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said evenly.

  Brad’s turtlelike eyes closed to slits as he spoke. “Offend? You make me want to puke. Wait, stop, empty your pockets, Ray.”

  Ray did as he was told.

  “Kick that knife this way,” said Brad. He scooped up Ray’s Swiss Army knife and slipped it into his pocket.

  Osborne kept an eye on Brad’s trigger finger. The guy kept waving the damn thing, using it to punctuate his remarks. Chances were good he might pull the trigger by accident again.

  “Offend?” Brad wasn’t letting go of the word. “Actually appalled is more like it,” he sniffed. “Do you—? Ha, ha, ha,” he paused midsentence to laugh, “Do you have any idea how dumb-shit that hat makes you look?” He waved his hand archly.

  “And you get away with it, see.” He shook his finger at Ray. “That’s what I can’t stand. People here think you’re clever. They think your idiot act is funny. But hell—why do I care?” He shook his head, “In less than an hour, I will be out of here forever. Away from all you stupid, crude idiots.”

  “You’re holding a gun on us because we’re crude?” asked Ray.

  Osborne almost rolled his eyes. This was no time for Ray to get cute.

  “You’re right, Ray. I have understated the case. Truth is, I’m gonna kill you because I hate your fucking guts,” said Brad. “I don’t even like looking at you. Turn around and face the wall. Good.” No break in his voice this time. He looked cool, too, thought Osborne. He looked tense but controlled and very satisfied that this moment had come.

  The three of them, Osborne, Ray, and Julie, now stood along the side wall, Ray with his back to the group. To their immediate left were Erin and the dead woman, Lew was on the floor at their feet, and Brad had moved to the center of the room. The baby had stopped screaming and slumped, exhausted, against his mother’s chest, his eyes closed.

  Above Erin’s head, a cooling unit in the wall kicked on with a loud whir. Osborne recognized the air compresser they had heard outside. The temperature in the room felt close to zero already, thought Osborne. He wondered how much colder it could get. The baby’s hands looked a little blue to Osborne. He felt okay, but he knew the tension was keeping him from feeling the full force of the cold.

  “Now, all three of you on your knees. Hurry!”

  As he knelt, Ray looked down at Lew on the floor, then at Osborne. “Is she—?”

  “He stunned her with the pistol on the back of the head—”

  “Hey, shut up! Everyone shut up,” said Brad.

  “I don’t want to shut up, Brad,” said Julie, her voice strident and slightly shrill. “If I’m going to die, I want to know why, and I want to know why you murdered Robert. I’m not going to shut up until you give me some goddamn answers.”

  Brad tipped his big head and swung his eyes toward her. “You’re right, Julie, it is indeed time we talked.” A nasty edge creeped into his soft voice. “I—well, ha, ha, ha—I do have some explaining to do, don’t I?” He chortled and flipped the silk scarf up and around his neck.

  “You can skip your ten years as a traveling silver thief,” said Julie. “I’ve got the documentation on all the hits you and Judith made out of Vegas.”

  “Every one?”

  “All sixty-seven.”

  “Ooh, that’s close—seventy-eight, actually. Well, three were art thefts that included silver.”

  “Why did you wait so long to come after Robert?”

  “We wanted the entire estate, and we sure couldn’t get that until the old lady passed away, could we? If you’re wondering how I found him, that was easy. Every time I misbehaved as a kid, old Potty Peggy would tell me that she was going to call up Mrs. Bowers in Kansas City and ask to trade for the ‘good boy.’ She made Robert into this mythical angel child whom I grew up hating. By the time we finally met, I’m afraid I couldn’t get past all the hatred and envy old Peggy had inspired over the years. Robert the good one, the lucky one. Brad the brat.”

  Osborne heard the soft padding of steps behind Brad. They stopped at the corner. No one entered the room. He couldn’t tell if Brad had heard or not, he was so focused on Julie. He was focused and he was preening. He was loving the moment.

  “If you’re so smart, Bradford, why didn’t you hasten her departure?” challenged Julie.

  “Believe me, I thought about it. But that old crone had too many people around her all the time. The damn housekeeper for one. I never had the chance. Speaking of chance—why did she pick Robert to adopt? To be her heir? She could’ve just as easily picked me—or Jude—why not all three of us? Julie, do you see why I am entitled to everything Robert had? Only by some quirk of fate did he get chosen instead of me. At least in my humble opinion. And … right now … my opinion counts.”

  He drew out his words, enjoying center stage. He looked around at the three of them, then at Erin and Lew. He raised his right hand and waved the gun with a delicate gesture as if tipping a tea cup with his little finger lifted: “I just realized something. This is so perfect: my most despised people in the world are all here today. Dr. Osborne, Julie Rehnquist, Ray the fish freak. Only Potty Peggy is missing. This is truly my day. And they say revenge is best served cold. Try frozen, huh?” And his high-pitched laughter filled the room.

  Osborne had inched closer to Erin until he could reach out to put his han
d on her shoulder. Mercifully, the baby was still quiet.

  “No, no, Dr. Osborne,” warned Brad, waving his gun, “don’t try to help your little girl. It’s too late for that.

  “Tell me,” Brad set one hand on his hip and leaned forward with a smirk on his face. “Does your lovely daughter know what a stupid man you are? That you practiced in Loon Lake because you were too incompetent to get accepted into a practice in Wausau? Or Madison? Peggy told me that you barely made it out of dental school. I often wonder, why are stupid people like you happy? Maybe you’re happy because you’re stupid?”

  “Brad,” said Osborne, speaking slowly. “Have I—has my family hurt you in some way?”

  “Hurt me?” With that, Brad trilled a shrill laugh and waved his hands. “Hurt me? Think back thirty years, old man! What about you and idiot Joe laughing at me in the boat? Forcing me to feel stupid because I couldn’t fish and hunt like all the other boys. God, how I hated the two of you.

  “I’ll never forget how you’d make me cast and cast and cast, pretending like you were teaching me and then snickering. You think I didn’t know? I know how you made fun of me. You and Joe and all your ignorant friends at the hunting shack. You think I didn’t know? You two made me sit in that goddam deer stand all alone, for hours, freezing. The worst stand, the one no one else wanted. At night you made me go to bed early, then everyone told stories about me and laughed.”

  He lowered his voice and narrowed his eyes. “You think I wasn’t aware of you making fun of me all these years? I saw it in your face at the bar the other day.”

  Right then, Osborne knew Brad lived in a world of his own. The truth was that he and Joe had bent over backward to teach the kid. They didn’t snicker, they despaired. They had felt helpless trying to help the boy who wouldn’t even try. They ended those afternoons almost in tears, not laughter. Then Peggy would rail at Joe for not trying harder. Joe felt inept. Many times he told Osborne what a failure he felt he had been as a father.

  For several years in Brad’s early teens, until it was clear that the boy hated it, Joe would try to include him in the warmth and camaraderie of deer season, bringing him to the hunting shack for the weeklong hunt. The other men’s sons lived for the day they got the invitation: their ticket to manhood. But Brad turned up his nose, making it clear that he considered it a waste of his time. Finally, Joe had given up. But where the rest of the anger came from, Osborne couldn’t even begin to imagine. Laughed at him? They never even talked about him. At least, not when Joe was around.

  “But why hurt Erin and my little grandson?” Osborne asked, pleading. He held his arms out toward his daughter. “They haven’t hurt you, Brad. Please, please let them go.”

  “Oh, no, no,” said Brad, lively and happy. “I watched you at the grocery store last Christmas, Doc. You were standing in line with Erin. I could see she’s the most important thing in your life. Isn’t she?” he demanded.

  “That’s what I like about this little mise-en-scène. Not only do you die, but you die miserable. You’ll have to watch your daughter die. And your grandson. That’s touching.” He smiled. “Of course, the baby will die sooner. At least I think so.”

  “Brad!” Julie interrupted. “Okay, Brad. You’ve pulled this off quite nicely, I must say. I underestimated you.” Julie was shivering hard.

  “Really, Julie? So you are impressed with my fish locker?” Brad waved the pistol at the walls of the room. But he kept his eyes riveted on them, suspicious as to what Julie was up to. Osborne took a good look around him for the first time. It was the most elaborate fish freezer he’d ever seen with varied sizes of lockers and racks, some closed, some open.

  “Quite Martha Stewart—all this just for fish? Or is it double-duty: fish locker and designer morgue?” asked Julie.

  “Cute,” said Brad. “You are very cute. Fish locker is the operative term. That’s what I told Robert, of course. He was so stupid. Who would ever believe you could catch so many fish, you’d need a locker like this? My goodness, no. Jude and I keep the paintings here. Not quite this chilly, of course. See that state-of-the-art freezing unit? Perfect humidity and temperature control. This is where we keep the larger paintings until we trade them in Chicago for the tiny wonders that we’re taking to Japan.”

  “Tiny wonders?” Julie asked. “What do you mean?”

  “My stroke of brilliance, dear,” bragged Brad. “It is just too ridiculous to ship or travel with huge, clunky works of art, I don’t care how much they are worth.” Brad waved a fussy hand. “No, I said, no, no. So instead, I traded in all Robert’s monumental junk like that Bacon that I couldn’t stand, the Frankenthalers, those impossible Diebenkorns. Out the door! I kept the small O’Keefe’s, Chagalls, several Monets. Then I picked up some Corots, two exceptional Vermeers, one stolen, of course. My dear Julie—do you believe it?! I’ve got a hundred thirty million bucks in small paintings to unload in Japan two days from now. Unload and sell. Even my buyers are all lined up.” “No silver?”

  “A little, only a few special items. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh …” Julie sighed. “Mrs. Bowers had those lovely silver pitchers from her family, pre-Civil War. Are those gone?”

  “Melted down, dear. Sorry,” said Brad. “I have ingots up the wazoo. That’s the only thing I liked about you, by the way. You do have taste.”

  “Thank you,” said Julie sweetly. “But you’re leaving behind the other six hundred million dollars that belonged to Robert. What’s so brilliant about that?”

  “Ha, ha, ha—” Brad made an attempt to laugh. “What are you talking about? Are you calling me a fool?”

  “Why not?” said Julie. Her agreeable tone vanished. “My percentage on getting out of here isn’t exactly great. Why not exit leaving you a little unhappy, too?” She paused and took a deep breath. Brad watched her, his eyes shifting ever so slightly as though he was worried about what he might hear.

  “For the record, Brad, Robert was planning to give you the goddam money.”

  Julie’s voice cracked like she was close to tears. “He didn’t want it. All he wanted was this house for the two of us and the children. That’s all. His plan was to give me this house with this little lake for a wedding gift, set up a small trust for us to live on … and give you the rest. He told me he loved you … like a brother.”

  Julie’s words seemed to stun Brad, who was staring at her.

  “I told him I thought he was crazy. I told him I thought you were a real weasel, but he wouldn’t hear any criticism of you. He genuinely cared for you.”

  Brad stood speechless. Julie, pleased with the impact she was having, continued. “He didn’t know you were natural siblings. Don’t misunderstand. But he told me he felt you were kindred spirits—if you know what I mean. He told me that he knew what you’d been through, and he would forgive you anything because no human being should have to fight through life the way the two of you had had to in your own separate situations.

  “He wasn’t rational, Brad, but maybe that’s a family trait. What I do know is this: he was planning to give all the Bowers money away—after he let you have as much as you wanted.”

  Suddenly a deep, almost musical voice rang out from behind Brad. It was a voice with a low timbre and a belllike edge.

  “Brad baby? Did I hear we’ve had a six-hundred-million-dollar oversight?” Judith Benjamin came around the corner and stopped in surprise at the sight of Ray’s deer rifle. Brad jumped at the sound of her voice.

  “I’ve been listening,” said Judith, answering the question on his face. “Thought I heard a pop a few minutes ago and came up to see if you dropped something.”

  twenty-four

  An excellent angler, and now with God.

  Isaak Walton, The Compleat Angler

  “What the hell is this?” Her eyes took in the room full of people, widening just slightly on spotting Julie.

  Osborne was shocked at the sight of her. Gone was the trench coat and the French twist. Instead, stopp
ed short behind Brad and dressed in a tailored charcoal-gray suit stood an individual whose appearance—tall, broad-shouldered, and dignified—suddenly made sense. What had been a too-tall, too-stout, too-burly female had metamorphosed into a stalwart, muscular male.

  The head was bald with a light fringe of white-blond hair at the temples and ears and around the back of the head. The lower face sported a neat grayish blond beard and mustache, probably attached with theatrical adhesive. But it was unmistakably Judith. Osborne recognized the signature horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Brad! Hey—we don’t have time for any foolishness. I want us in the air in fifteen minutes.” There was an imperious edge to her voice, and Brad’s hand wobbled with the gun in it as if he was apologizing for bad behavior.

  Judith’s eyes, flat and wide as her brother’s, seemed even larger in the thin, strong-boned face. No makeup lightened their effect now. She let them play over the sight of Osborne, Ray still standing with his back to the room, and Julie. The ice in her eyes seem to drop the temperature in the freezer another ten or twenty degrees.

  “Brad, give me that gun.” Judith reached for the pistol, and her hand grasped it expertly. She pulled the lapels of her jacket close around her neck. “Brrr—what the hell do you have this set at?”

  “As low as it can go—the flash-freeze temp.”

  “Good. We’re out of here.” She started to leave, then she stopped and turned, her eyes on Osborne. “I am sorry that Brad insisted on including you, Dr. Osborne. But it does make good business sense. Now that we have you and Ray, the good chief here, little orphan Annie, and Erin, this makes for a more efficient exit. Who’s left to know any details? No one in Loon Lake. Right? If it took six weeks to find the other bodies, how long will it take until they find their way to a house that’s not even on a map?”

  “Judith?” Ray spoke up, his voice slightly muffled against the wall.

  “I made him turn around,” said Brad. “I hate his idiot face.”