The Fury of Rachel Monette
Page 33
But she had also seen Mademoiselle Hoff hurrying toward the temple with a heavy washtub in her arms. “We use it for storage and laundry,” he had said of the temple. But the washtub had been big enough to hide a five-year-old boy.
She walked around to the heavy wooden door at the rear of the temple. Not a sound came from within, or from the house nearby. Rachel took her pencil flashlight from her pocket and shone it for a moment on the door. The brass padlock was in place; the hasp was sturdy. But the screws yielded to her screwdriver, and she dropped them one by one into her pocket where they could make no noise. The hasp swung free. Rachel drew the gun from her belt and slowly pushed the door open.
Cool air touched her skin as she stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and ran the narrow beam of light in a sweeping arc. A man stood against the far wall. She jerked the light back on to him, and dropped to one knee, pointing the gun as Levy had told her. But she did not fire: the man had no face. He was a manikin, a manikin with a black round-rimmed hat and a long black coat. Rachel crossed the cold hard floor and lifted the hat off the plastic head. A black furry thing fell out of the hat and dropped to her feet like a dead animal. She did not bother to pick it up; it had to be a false beard. She turned the hat in her hands and sniffed inside. It smelled faintly of mint and stale sweat.
Slowly Rachel shone the light around the room. The walls were hung with heavy red drapes. In the center of each drape was a white circle, outlined in black, and within each circle a black swastika. Gold-framed photographs were displayed on the drapes. A few were portraits of Adolf Hitler; some showed him addressing large crowds. There were photographs of other Nazis she did not recognize. One picture, smaller than the rest, caught her eye. She went over to the wall and looked at it closely.
Two young men were standing on flat sandy ground, one tall and thin, the other shorter and already growing plump. They wore képis, the flat, round-topped, stiff-brimmed hat of the French soldier. The tall one was smiling, the shorter one seemed less relaxed. The smiling man was Xavier Monette and there was little doubt that his companion was DePoe. Behind them stood a long low windowless building which appeared to be made of concrete blocks.
Near the door was a steel file cabinet with two drawers. The top one was empty. In the bottom drawer Rachel found a worn German edition of Mein Kampf. She turned quickly through the pages. Some of the passages were underlined in blue ink. Rachel did not know German, but in most of the underlined sections she noticed the word Juden.
In the back of the book was an envelope, addressed to Xavier Monette. She recognized the handwriting and began to tremble as she withdrew its contents. It was a Xerox copy of the letter Dan had written to his father six days before he died, a letter she thought he had never mailed.
“… I have received one letter with which you may be able to help me,” she read. “Not a letter at all, really—it’s a document that seems to pertain to North Africa. I know you were there during the war and you may have come across information that might help to explain it. I will make a copy of it in the morning when the secretary arrives, and enclose it with this letter.” From that she had assumed he had not sent the letter. Attached to the last page was a copy of the document. He had copied the letter as well, mailing it and keeping the original. Rachel had never kept a copy of a letter in her life.
Barely aware of what she was doing Rachel neatly folded the letter, returned it to the envelope, placed it in the book and put the book in the drawer as she had found it. Xavier Monette had come for the original document. Had he intended to kill Dan from the beginning, or had there been an argument? He had begun to search the study for it but had been stopped by Mrs. Flores’s arrival. He came to the funeral hoping for a chance to continue the search. She remembered leaving him alone in Dan’s office, and finding him in the study in the middle of the night. He had to have that document: he could not risk having Calvi exposed.
So he had sent the blond man to try for a third time. The blond man who bore such a strong resemblance to the housekeeper, Mademoiselle Hoff. And the blond man had almost succeeded. Monette would have tried again. She knew that if she hadn’t started moving she would be dead. It would take more than a few such setbacks to make him give up. He had been fighting his one-man war for a long time; a war against the Jews. A war, she suddenly thought, that he had been forced to wage finally within his own family, against a wife who knew his secret and a son who wrote books in support of the enemy. And married one.
Rachel closed the door of the filing cabinet and went outside. A thin gray crescent showed on the eastern horizon, as if a giant eyelid was slowly opening. In front of the door she knelt and replaced the hasp. She spent more time than she should have driving in the screws: her hands were unsteady. Inside the house she heard a toilet flush. The sound made her heart pound so hard she feared it would seize and stop forever. She ran to the other side of the temple, where she could not be seen from the house.
Leaning horizontally against the wall was a short ladder of the kind used in harvesting fruit trees. Rachel stood it upright and climbed onto the flat roof of the temple. She crawled across to the edge which faced the front of the house.
She lay on the roof as dawn slowly spread color over the earth. The grass became green, the gravel lane rust, the house white with black trim and an orange tile roof. In front of the house was parked a long black car which the night had hidden from her. She was about to lower herself from the roof and try to disable it when the front door opened.
Mademoiselle Hoff appeared on the threshold. She wore a light coat and a formal black hat on her broad head. Sticking two fingers between her lips she whistled loudly. The harsh sound echoed over the fields, but brought no dog running. Mademoiselle Hoff scanned the grounds, while Rachel crept back on the roof. She whistled again, waited for a few moments, and reentered the house.
A minute later she came out again, carrying three large suitcases. She opened the trunk of the car and lifted them in. From the open doorway came the sound of footsteps on the tile floor. Two sets of footsteps, Rachel thought, one of them very light. She knew those light footsteps, and the knowledge made her as still as a corpse; a corpse with tears in its eyes.
Xavier Monette walked through the door. And there beside him was Adam. Rachel bit her lip to keep from calling out his name.
They were dressed for traveling; Monette in a dark suit and dark coat and Adam in beige shorts, a beige shirt, and a black necktie.
“Is everything ready?” Monette asked Mademoiselle Hoff in French.
“I can’t find the dog.”
Monette made a short gesture of dismissal. “It’s not important.” He began walking toward the car. Adam hung back. Shoot him now, she thought. But Monette turned. “Come,” he said in English to Adam. “We are in a hurry.”
“Are we going to see Mummy and Daddy?”
“Come when I call you,” Monette said sharply.
Adam came. Monette took him by the arm as they went to the car. Mademoiselle Hoff opened the passenger door. Monette and Adam approached the other side, closer to Rachel. Monette reached for the door handle.
Rachel jumped to her feet and pointed the gun at Monette. “Stop.” Three heads jerked up to look at her. Two with fear and the other with wonder.
“It’s her.” Mademoiselle Hoff spoke with hatred. “The bitch who killed Rudi.”
Monette’s arm snapped out as quickly as a snake; he grabbed Adam and raised him up as a shield. Mademoiselle Hoff slowly closed the door and put her hands in the pockets of her coat.
“I’ve come for my son. Put him down.”
Monette smiled reasonably. “He’s not yours. He is mine.”
“You madman. You killed your son. You stuck a God-damned letter opener into his chest.”
Monette’s smile ebbed from his face, leaving it for an instant without expression. Then as if a tidal wave had surged up from his heart, Monette’s face turned red and swollen. The pressure made a muscle in his ch
eek twitch.
“Imbecile,” he shouted. “There are more important things than human life. Much more important.” He was squeezing Adam’s arms so hard that his knuckles went as white as dried bones. “But why should I explain myself to a Jew?”
Adam began to cry. Rachel felt a rage more powerful than any she had ever imagined sweep over her; every cell in her body seemed to quiver with it.
Monette noticed and it brought a smile once more to his face, a mocking smile. “You want to kill me, don’t you?” He held Adam higher. “Then shoot.”
Rachel thought of aiming low, at his legs which were not covered by Adam’s body. It wouldn’t kill him, but he might drop Adam. She aimed the gun at his knees. But her hand was shaking so badly she did not dare fire. “Give him to me.”
Monette laughed a short barking laugh. It almost kept her from catching the brief flicker of his eyes. She glanced quickly at Mademoiselle Hoff on the far side of the car.
The woman was drawing a black gun from her coat pocket. Rachel aimed at her and pulled the trigger. The explosion almost kicked the gun from her hand. Pinchas had warned her, but she had forgotten. There was a sharp whining sound, and a ragged silver tear appeared in the black roof of the car. She lifted her gaze beyond the car, right into the barrel of Mademoiselle Hoff’s gun.
Rachel dropped face down and rolled. She heard the crack of another shot and felt the tiny breeze an insect might make, close to her neck. She kept rolling until she reached the edge of the roof. There was nowhere else to go.
She raised her head and looked down. Mademoiselle Hoff swung the gun in a short arc. Point, don’t aim, Pinchas had said. Rachel pointed and squeezed. This time she was ready for the explosion.
Mademoiselle Hoff fell backward with a hoarse grunt. Her gun went off as she hit the ground, a last shot at the bright blue sky.
The car door slammed. Rachel saw that Monette had jumped into the front seat, pushing Adam ahead of him. Before she could react he had started the engine and wheeled the car around in the lane. The tires fired gravel in the air as it sped away.
Rachel leaped off the roof, fell, rolled to her feet and ran. She could catch him at the gate. It was locked, and he would have trouble opening it because of the dog. She ran along the lane, through the peach orchard and toward the gate. She ran with all her heart.
The car was already there. Quickly Monette got out, opened the lock and slid back the bolt. One side of the gate he threw open easily, but she could see he was having difficulty with the other. The animal, whining in fear, had dug its paws into the ground. Monette drew back his leg and kicked it in the head. Then he pushed the door open.
Rachel was very close, but not close enough. Monette scrambled back into the car. In a moment they would be gone. Don’t fire while moving, Pinchas had told her. She forced herself to stop and kneel.
Through the rear window she saw the back of Monette’s head. He had no shield now. She pointed the gun. Suddenly her hand was very steady, steadier than it had ever been or than a human hand could be; as steady as something old and immovable, like the earth itself. She pulled the trigger.
The black car rolled through the gate, across the road, and stopped against the trunk of an olive tree. The passenger door opened. Adam stepped down to the ground. He looked toward the house.
“Adam.”
Rachel dropped the gun. She ran to him, lifted him up and held him in her arms. His fine hair touched the skin of her face and slowly grew damp with her tears.
“Mummy,” he said very softly, almost to himself. As she rocked him to and fro she felt the tension ebb gradually from his little body until at last he was at peace. In that moment Rachel was aware of a faint quickening of pride within her, pride in what she had done.
It died stillborn. Adam’s lips moved against her breast, “Where’s Daddy?”
She opened her mouth to tell him, but the sounds that came out were beyond her control. Sobbing she clung to him, and Adam sobbed too.
“But Daddy said he wouldn’t die for ages and ages.”
“My brave little boy. My brave little boy.”
It was no good. Rachel felt completely helpless. She could not begin to make his pain go away. And for a long time after, what she had done meant nothing to her at all.
About the Author
Peter Abrahams is the author of thirty-three novels. Among his acclaimed crime thrillers are Hard Rain, Pressure Drop, The Fury of Rachel Monette, Tongues of Fire, Edgar Award finalist Lights Out, Oblivion, End of Story, and The Fan, which was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes. Under the name Spencer Quinn, he writes the New York Times–bestselling Chet and Bernie Mystery series, which debuted with Dog on It. Abrahams’s young adult novel Reality Check won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery in 2010, and Down the Rabbit Hole, the first novel in his Echo Falls Mystery series, won the Agatha Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel in 2005.
Abrahams lives on Cape Cod with his family. Visit his website: www.spencequinn.com
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Peter Abrahams
Cover design by Barbara Brown
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1631-5
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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