Move to Strike

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “The gun?” He tried again, gently. He moved toward her and she jumped. She had a tight grip on her gun there in her lap. He stopped again. Now about six feet separated them. If she moved it too high, pointed it at him—it was too dark in there to shoot to wound her. He’d have to kill her.

  A voice inside him said, self-preservation, buddy, don’t think twice. He recognized that voice.

  “I need it,” she said. “I’m sorry you came.”

  “It’s Nicholas Zack, isn’t it? Can I see him?”

  Following a hesitation, a small gesture from her seemed to make it okay. She got on her knees and crawled just out of his reach.

  Watching her carefully and still holding his own gun on her, he touched the torso. Mummified. The air down here would preserve a body well. Easier for the forensics people to check out the cause of death, although he had a pretty good idea about that. Whereas the skin on the rest of the body was stretched tight or had fallen away, the shriveled neck remained somewhat intact, except for a long, black, gaping wound.

  Next to the huddled figure, a Spanish guitar. Where Beth had sat, the boom box. “His voice was on a recording?” he said.

  “He wrote that song for me.”

  “How did he get here?” Paul asked, moving back from the body, favoring his leg.

  “Bill put him here with his guitar, so everyone would think he just went away. Never even buried him. Bill didn’t like to do anything that might harm his hands.”

  Beth raised the gun and took a shot at the ceiling. The blast in the enclosed space was deafening, and Paul almost rushed her. But she was holding her own gun very firmly. Dirt rained down on them for a few seconds. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  “Shoot me! Or maybe I can make us both die.”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “Then go away. We don’t want you here.” She was unrecognizable now, both of them were covered with a layer of dirt and some of the small stones had hit him hard when they’d rained down. Now he heard some ominous shifting above that made him even more nervous.

  “Come with me, Beth.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Okay, okay. Look. Take it easy now. Listen. Let’s take a minute here and calm down.” Even as he said it, though, a sharp piece of timber fell onto his shoulder. He had never felt less calm. Talk to her, get her attention diverted, rush her . . .

  “Did Bill kill him, Beth?”

  “I killed him,” Beth said. She just said it, no fuss, no emotion. She brushed dirt out of her hair with one hand. He kept the flashlight off her face and on her hands, where the gun was.

  “That’s a surprise,” Paul said. “I hadn’t thought of you. Tell me what happened, Beth. Why?”

  She thought about whether she wanted to talk to him. Then she shrugged a little.

  “Nicholas had decided to go back to Daria. He had an attack of conscience. He took my soul and smashed it and tore me to pieces, and I was supposed to wish him luck. He came to my house one night when Bill was gone and told me . . . we were in the study . . . I . . . this great angry hatred rose up in me and took over. The sword was right behind me. Nicholas never had a chance. He never saw it coming.

  “I sat there with him for a long time. When Bill found us, he doped me up. Much later he told me that he buried Nicholas out in the desert. I never realized where until Nina asked Daria about this mine. Bill kept my secret. Even faked postcards from Nicholas and sent money to fool Daria. But I paid, oh, I paid. He had me now. He could have taken Chris from me, I knew that every second of every day. He had me, and he wouldn’t let me go, but he couldn’t forgive me. He was punishing me the whole time.”

  “So you had to kill him? To free yourself?”

  She breathed in deeply, and looked down at her gun. “Oh, no. It wasn’t like that at all. I just accepted my fate. Six years of hell went by. Daria and Nikki’s life destroyed —I couldn’t bear to see them. Six years of Bill’s tight lips, his hand squeezing my shoulder, the bed.

  “Then Chris turned eighteen and started college. I had kept everything from him. He thought his parents had a happy marriage. You can’t imagine how hard that was. I gave that child a good stable home and he was wonderful, he was everything to me. When he left, I finally told Bill I was leaving him.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “And I lost Chris forever because of it.”

  He had to keep her talking. He had to get that gun. “Tell me what happened then, Beth. I’m trying to understand.”

  “No one can understand.”

  “I can.”

  “You’re not a killer. Like me.”

  He almost told her she was wrong but kept his mouth shut.

  Her white arm rose through the murk to push hair off her forehead. She stared at Nicholas Zack’s body now and almost seemed to be talking only to him.

  “I told Bill I was leaving him. He could have called the police and had me arrested right then and there if he wanted but he didn’t. The scandal would ruin his practice and he would probably be arrested, too. He knew that. So he let me go without a fight. I went to LA to talk to a lawyer about a divorce. I planned to move south to be closer to Chris.”

  Paul’s eyes flicked back to Nicholas Zack’s frozen face. The vacant eye sockets seemed to look back at him, bearing silent witness.

  “Bill called me in LA.” She paused. “He said he would sign the settlement agreement my lawyer was drafting if I would come up right away on a plane he’d chartered for me.”

  Paul was edging toward her again, not breathing, taking only an inch at a time. There were definite cracking sounds overhead. Although Beth’s hand gripped the gun, he could see the wavering ripple of nerves moving through her and down into her fingers. She was shaky, unstable. He didn’t know what to expect.

  “Beth, please. I think we should get out of here,” he said.

  “Go if you want.”

  “Not if you’re going to shoot yourself as soon as I leave.”

  Beth made a sound that he couldn’t quite distinguish, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Then stay a little longer, Paul,” she said. “It’s good to talk. I’ve held it in for so long.”

  He almost left right then. He really wanted to go. The chances of saving her didn’t look good. But he said, “I’m still listening. I’m not leaving.”

  “The night before I was scheduled to fly,” she said, “Dennis Rankin tracked me down. He wanted to talk to me about an opal strike on Grandpa’s land. That’s when I found out Bill wanted to cheat me.”

  Paul was focusing all his energy on moving in minuscule increments. He watched for her hand to falter, to loosen, but all her vitality was concentrated in her right hand and on the gun.

  She sighed. “I’m feeling quite tired, Paul,” she said, “but nobody knows yet what Bill did. I want someone to know.”

  “You can rest outside, Beth. You can talk to me just as well where it’s safe. Just give me . . .”

  “No. I don’t think I will. But I’ll tell you the rest of it. You’re a nice man, Paul. I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  “That’s good, Beth.”

  “I wanted to talk to Rankin without Bill knowing so instead of taking the charter I flew to Reno on a shuttle flight and drove up to Tahoe to meet him. When Rankin learned that I owned part of the land, he wanted to make a deal, so I said he could manage the strike. I was furious, I admit that. Bill was cheating me to keep me poor and weak. That was the only way he could keep me. I was so disgusted, so tired of living with a man who was my jailer. I decided to go home right then and pack a few boxes and leave for good.

  “When I got home, I was so rattled I couldn’t find my house key in my bag, so I just gave up and rang the doorbell. Bill came to the door in a towel. He seemed completely confused to see me, but before I could find out if Chris had already gotten in, the phone rang in the study. Bill answered and I went into the kitchen to get some plastic bags for packing small things. I could h
ear him talking. I thought it must be Chris on the phone. After he talked for a minute or two, he—I didn’t understand what was going on. I’d never heard him like that before, not even when he lost a patient. I thought he was having a heart attack. He was screaming into the phone and I ran back in and he was writhing on the floor.

  “You see”—she made a dry, rasping sound as she drew in her breath—“Chris had a few days off from college and I—I had said, ‘Why don’t you go to Tahoe? Take that flight your dad arranged for me. You’ll be up there tonight.’

  “I didn’t know Bill had decided to kill me.”

  “Kill you?”

  She nodded. “Because I was leaving him. He paid a mechanic a lot of money to sabotage that plane.”

  “Jesus!” Paul said. “He killed his son instead!” He was shocked to the core, filled with the unspeakable horror of it.

  “And the hell of it is, he loved Chris too, more than anything in the world,” Beth said. “That’s the hell of it. Nothing else mattered to either of us by then, it was all emptiness.”

  Paul just shook his head. He couldn’t think of a word to say.

  “Chris had called Bill to tell his dad he was on his way home. Bill didn’t realize at first Chris was on the plane. But then—the engine quit. When I heard Bill sounding so strange, I came running from the kitchen. Bill was out of his mind. Hysterical. He told me that was Chris on the phone, and he had heard everything. Chris had shouted for help. He had cried. My poor, poor baby. The one thing left in my life. Such a fearful death, time to know that he would die, time for terror—it took a minute before I believed what Bill was telling me. That the plane had crashed. That the phone was dead. That Chris was dead.

  “It came back, what I’d felt in that same room the night I killed Nicholas. A terrible anger, so powerful it was unreal, like living a nightmare. I grabbed the sword and brought it down on the back of Bill’s neck. Then I slashed him again. So much blood everywhere. Just like it must be every day in Bill’s operating room, that’s what I kept thinking.”

  She stopped, then said, “It didn’t show on me, did it, Paul? You never know with people, do you? Would you believe I could slash his face then, so some patient like Stan Foster would get blamed, and wipe the handle of the sword? It was easier the second time. I never saw Daria. She must have come after I left. And then Nikki got blamed.”

  Paul said nothing.

  “I tried to help. I paid her legal fees.”

  “What if she’d been convicted?”

  “I would never have told the truth,” Beth said. “But it feels good to tell you, Paul.”

  “Come with me now,” Paul said. “I’ll help you get legal counsel. I still want to help you. Don’t give up completely. Let’s start with the gun, okay?”

  “The gun.” She seemed to be nodding. “I used it to kill the mechanic.”

  “I thought maybe you did.”

  “Three murders—but I was cold when I killed him. It was simple to fly down there and get in. Because he killed Chris. For money! So I avenged my son. But coldly, Paul. I didn’t feel a thing. Then I started thinking that Rankin knew too much, and I thought maybe I should kill him, too. And now, you know, part of me wants to die, but what can I say, the monster wants to live, and you’re here . . .”

  He saw the movement of her hand, the movement he’d been dreading. “Don’t do it!”

  But she was raising the gun—

  Toward him? Toward herself?

  He launched himself the rest of the way across the cavern and, at the same time, heard the shot.

  CHAPTER 31

  NINA HAD ALREADY rushed forward. She chopped viciously upward with her hand and Beth’s gun flew up to the ceiling and fell to the dirt a few feet away in the gloom. Beth let out a scream and pulled Nina down and seemed to try to bite her. There were scuffling sounds and dirt and wood and stones were coming down on them. Paul couldn’t tell them apart. He yanked on a loose arm. It was Beth. She screamed.

  He pulled her away from Nina roughly and to her feet. He had his gun and for a millisecond his finger was tight on the trigger. Instead he flung her away, against the stone wall. She sank down next to the sight-less, mummified witness to all this.

  Nina got up, crying, “She shot herself in the arm! She’s bleeding!”

  “Are you hurt?” He checked her over, wiping her cheeks with his fingers. “The timbers overhead . . .”

  “I’m fine. Really. You?” A big, too big, timber thudded into the dirt, accompanied by a stream of stones, and they all started coughing.

  They both looked at Beth. She hadn’t moved. The dirt was piling around her legs and hips.

  “I got worried and decided to find you,” Nina said. “I heard voices. When I saw her point the gun I . . .”

  “She wouldn’t have killed me. She was trying to kill herself.”

  “Maybe,” Nina said. “Maybe not.” She was pulling herself together rapidly. Her voice was hard.

  Beth began rocking back and forth. The shower of stones was increasing. “We have to get out of here right now,” Nina said.

  “Okay, Beth,” Paul said. “Beth?” No response. He turned to Nina. “Let’s get her up and out.”

  Paul helped Beth to her feet. A stream of blood ran down her arm. He and Nina backed toward the tunnel, choking in the dust, blind, half-dragging Beth, and the noise increased as larger stones began to fall.

  “Hurry! Damnit, Beth, help us or we’re not going to get out of here!”

  Paul gave up, picking her up and hunching into the tunnel, Nina right behind. A thunderous noise and a choking cloud of dirt came from behind them, and they stumbled and fell and crawled somehow beyond it.

  Then there came a great silence. They fell into the dirt, breathing like locomotives in the blackness. Paul flashed the light behind them, toward the cavern. The entry was completely blocked.

  “Nicholas,” Beth said. But Nicholas made no reply. The body of Nicholas Zack had been buried by nature, for good this time.

  They put her into the Bronco. Nina jumped into the front seat and started it up. Paul sat in back with Beth, his gun handy. She held her forearm, where the bullet had grazed her as Nina knocked into her, but the blood had stopped.

  Beth let out a short, bitter laugh. Nina stepped on it and they roared up the dirt road.

  About twenty minutes later, as they finally turned onto the highway, Beth said to Paul, “It was all a lie. Bill killed him. I was out of my mind back there. The sight of Nicholas made me crazy! I can’t be held responsible!”

  “Shut up, Beth!” Paul ordered. “Don’t tell me any more. I’m already a witness.”

  “I’ll deny everything. Paul, I need you. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  “I’ll help you, Beth,” Paul said. “I’ll help you get a good lawyer. And it won’t be Nina.”

  Nikki was sitting at the computer in the hovel wearing her ball and chain. She had been reading her e-mail, starting with one from Scott in jail. He was doing a lot of reading on his case. He thought he might want to go into the legal field after all this was over. His attorney, Jeffrey Riesner, had told him he would be out soon. He was learning a lot from the dude, and could see it was the kind of profession that would really appeal to him.

  She didn’t know what to make of that. The less she saw of the inside of a courtroom, the better.

  With the clicking of her mouse, three spams went straight into the trash. Then . . . Nikki stared at the screen, at the blue underlined letters. Could it be true? Did she have a message from Krigshot, the greatest, most hard-core band in Sweden? These guys weren’t sellouts. They were better than HellNation, even better than Destroy! She clicked on the message line, holding her breath, and the message came up.

  Hey Nikki, your songs are crusty . . . we downloaded the screamers from MP3 web site . . . you deep, girl . . . your web site is thrashed and we never seen anything so hard core . . .

  Nikki thought, oh, boy, this is it, they’re asking me to jo
in the band!

  So we were thinkin maybe youd do a web site for us cuz we’re just asswipe musicians not artists like you so how bout it Nikki? Is five grand enuf?

  What? She scrolled back up to read again, starting from the beginning. The words made her blood jump, then:

  youd do a web site for us

  They didn’t want her in the band, they wanted her to do a web site? But that was so easy, you just had to be obsessive and pissed off and throw stuff up there! She read it again.

  Is five grand enuf?

  Wow!

  “Mom!” she screamed. “Mom!”

  Daria dropped a basket of laundry, rushed through the doorway, and ran to her daughter’s side. “Nikki, what’s the matter? What is it? You called me ‘Mom!’ ” Her eyes were wide with fear.

  Nikki pointed at the screen.

  Daria squinted at the monitor. “Well,” she said and squatted down on the floor beside Nikki. “This is just so spectacular! We may or may not have opals, but here’s the real proof we have a talented person here. That’s so much more important.” She tapped her chin. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Don’t even start thinking about using that money for anything but bills, Mom. There’s this notice that just came from the electric company . . .”

  “Congratulations,” Daria said. She was looking at her proudly. It made Nikki want to laugh, they were in such a mess, but for Daria, talent was the thing, and it always would be.

  It was her own joy, her relief, that broke Nikki’s resolve, made her open her mouth and say the thing that had been making her sick for months now. It just sort of crept out of her mouth. “Mom, you came into the study. Uncle Bill was still alive. I saw you.”

  “Saw what, baby?” She didn’t get it at first.

  “I saw you. Your shadow. It looked exactly like you. Exactly.”

  “No, honey. Whoever you saw, it wasn’t me. You were gone already, and he was dead on the floor when I got there. Did you think I killed your uncle? You’ve been protecting me!”

  “Mom, don’t lie to me! Not now!”