Full Frontal Murder

by Barbara Paul

Holland submitted to the massage, wondering how long he could keep this bizarre charade going.

  28

  Marian didn’t want to admit it, but she was scared.

  The oppressive blackness around her, being alone this far underground—that in itself was enough to give her the willies. But if she should happen to blunder on to the spot where Fairchild was holding Holland … she could cost Holland his life if she wasn’t careful.

  For the last ten minutes she’d noticed a new pull on her Achilles tendons; the tunnel was sloping downward to a new level. The gradient was slight but unmistakable. The temperature was dropping as well; it was almost cool.

  Marian’s heart was pounding because she thought this was surely the tunnel they were looking for. The layer of grit on the service walkway showed footprints and the same wheel tracks she’d noticed in the last tunnel. Both footprints and wheel tracks could have been made by a homeless person pushing a grocery cart, but she didn’t think so. As well as she could make out, these tracks were left by four wheels evenly spaced, unlike those on the carts in the supermarkets. But somebody had been using this tunnel lately. She passed an empty cardboard carton of the sort fried chicken came in, but it looked as if it had been there a long time.

  A rat ran across her foot.

  She stopped dead still, swallowing a cry. She shone the light around and behind her, but the rat had disappeared. Marian took a deep breath and started forward again, her already cautious approach now even more so.

  Two or three minutes later she came across a whole pack of them, red eyes gleaming in the beam of her flashlight as they swarmed all over the walkway and blocked her path. Marian shuddered. How to get rid of them? She couldn’t fire her gun into their midst … or make any noise at all.

  What she needed was something to throw. Marian had left her shoulder bag locked in Jim Murtaugh’s car; no help there. And she wasn’t about to throw her gun away. She went back for the chicken carton she’d passed. Not much weight, but at least it wouldn’t make any noise when it hit.

  The rats squealed when the carton landed among them and darted off in different directions. Two of them headed straight for Marian.

  She kicked them off the walkway onto the tracks below.

  The rats quickly regrouped, swarming around the empty carton looking for any remaining bite of food. Breathing shallowly, Marian started tapping one foot. A rat came to investigate. She kicked it off. Aha.

  On her next attempt, she got three. Even better.

  But when she tried it again, the remaining dozen or so all turned on her. Then Marian was kicking and kicking, pressing her lips together to keep from screaming. One rat started climbing her trouser leg; she knocked it away with her flashlight. She kicked and kicked and kicked.

  Then suddenly she was kicking at empty air. She steadied herself and flashed the light around. What rats she hadn’t managed to knock off the walkway had retreated. She aimed her light ahead and behind; no sign of them that she could see.

  Marian slumped against the tunnel wall and momentarily gave in to the shakes. She was sweating and breathing heavily. But almost immediately she pushed away from the wall and started forward again. Moving was better than standing still.

  The gradual downward slope of the tunnel ended, and the air had turned decidedly chilly this far underground. The tunnel started a long curve to the right. At the end of the curve, Marian stopped.

  There was a light up ahead.

  Quickly she turned off her flashlight. She couldn’t make out anything about the light; it was still too far away. Marian flattened against the wall and started inching along the walkway in the pitch-dark, trying not to think about rats.

  When she’d gotten a little closer, she could see movement around the light. But who was there, homeless or Holland, she still couldn’t tell. She continued her crablike progress.

  Then she was able to make out two figures. One of them was naked.

  Marian pulled out her beacon signaler to check; the tiny green light was still pulsing regularly. Gloria, hurry!

  She inched her way forward.

  Fairchild had started to extend his massage beyond the neck, but Holland complained that his ribs were hurting where his captor had kicked him. Fairchild was still on his knees behind him, contenting himself with fingering Holland’s hair.

  “You have nice hair. Soft, good body, a nice shine. Do you use a blow-dryer?”

  Holland grimaced; it was his one physical vanity, his hair.

  A light slap across the back of the head. “Answer me.”

  “Yes, I use a blow-dryer.”

  “Thought so. I wonder what you would look like bald? That might be an interesting experiment.”

  “I’ll just grow some more.”

  Fairchild’s fingers trailed lightly down Holland’s back. “Most of these lash wounds are healing, but there’s one here that still doesn’t look quite right. Time for more of the salve.” He got up and headed toward the cart of supplies.

  Holland quickly pulled himself to his feet and stepped over to stand by the wall. He didn’t like Fairchild kneeling behind him.

  He came back with the salve. “Lie down. It’s easier that way.”

  “I’ve been sitting too long. My legs are cramping.” Holland gave one leg a little shake by way of demonstration.

  The other man shrugged and told him to turn around. “I’ll need to get some more. The tube’s almost empty.”

  The salve felt good going on. But when Fairchild’s fingers started dancing around Holland’s waist, Holland jerked away. “That’s fine. Thank you.”

  Fairchild tossed away the now empty tube. “Ticklish?” he said with a laugh. “Don’t you let the lieutenant touch you? Or does she just lie there for you without moving? Tell me what it’s like, you and her.”

  Suddenly, like a switch being turned off, Holland had had enough. He was drained by the effort of concealing his contempt, of keeping the cat-and-mouse game going. And now he was expected to entertain his captor with stories of intimate moments shared with Marian? No. When he turned to face his tormentor, his eyes were like ice. “Marian can touch me anywhere she likes, anytime she likes. She is the only one I permit to touch me. Have you got that, Fairchild? The only one.”

  Fairchild’s face turned an angry red. “Do you think I need your permission? I can do anything to you I want!”

  “Yes. You can. But you can’t do it with my permission. That, you will never have.”

  Fairchild’s voice went up. “I’m in control here! It’s what I say that counts! I can end your life like that!” He snapped his fingers.

  “You can do that too. What you can’t do is solve your problems without using violence. Don’t you know coercive violence is the last resort of the incompetent? You’re a loser, Fairchild.”

  Too late, Holland saw he had goaded him too far. Fairchild lost it completely. He screamed curses at Holland in a high, constricted voice. “Who do you think you are, talking to me like that! You speak to me with respect, do you understand? By god, you are going to learn respect. Before you die, you are going to call me ‘master’—and mean it!” Wildly he looked around for a way to hurt Holland.

  It was probably too late for damage control, but Holland tried anyway. “Then prove me wrong! Resolve this one problem—me—without using violence. Just this once. Fairchild! Do you hear?”

  If he did, he gave no sign. Fairchild had fetched the matches he used to light the camp stove and was squatting down by the mattress. “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be burned at the stake?” he spat out. “Well, you’re going to get a taste of it right now.” Holland watched in dismay as Fairchild ripped open one end of the mattress with a pocketknife and held a lighted match to the cotton stuffing. It took him several tries before the material caught fire.

  Fairchild grabbed a safe part of the mattress and swung the burning end around toward Holland. “Maybe this will teach you respect, hah? How do you like that?” He pushed the mattress rig
ht up against Holland’s legs. Holland twisted and turned and kicked frantically at the blazing, smoking mattress while Fairchild laughed at his efforts. The flames licked up around Holland’s legs and he screamed.

  Then, to his utter amazement, Holland saw Marian Larch come flying through the air to land on Fairchild’s back. They both went down with a crash. Marian was on top; before he had time to react, she grabbed Fairchild by the hair and smashed his face against the cement floor hard … three, four times. And then a fifth time. She jerked his hands behind his back and cuffed him. Fairchild gave out a few bubbly moans and went limp.

  Marian scrambled over to the burning mattress, which was sending out a stench so foul that it made her gag. She grabbed the only corner that wasn’t on fire and dragged the mattress to the edge of the platform, knocking over one of the lanterns on the way. With an effort she pushed the mattress over onto the tracks. Her eyes were watering; the thing was smoking like burned peppers.

  Marian hurried back to Holland. He lay slumped on the ground, grimacing with pain; both legs were burned up to the knees. The twisting and kicking he’d done had opened up the cuts on his abdomen; he was bleeding again. Marian was screaming inside, horrified by the condition he was in. She touched him hesitantly, afraid of hurting him more. “Help is coming,” she told him gently. “I’ve already signaled.”

  Then she went back to Fairchild and started searching through his pockets but stopped at a sound from Holland. He raised his manacled hands to point along the wall. He gasped, but couldn’t get any words out.

  Marian retrieved her flashlight and went looking where he’d pointed. There it was: a key ring on a nail. She grabbed it and ran back to Holland. Even though she tried to be careful, he winced when she unlocked the manacles. As soon as she had them off, she saw why: his wrists were bloody and raw.

  Holland was struggling not to pass out. “So nice … to see you … again.” The effort left him gasping for breath.

  “Ssh. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. Just be as still as you can.”

  He grimaced, said no more.

  Fairchild began to moan. Marian ignored him.

  The moaning grew louder and turned into a scream. “My node! You broke my node!”

  “I broke more than your nose,” Marian told him. “I broke your whole goddam face.”

  He called her a bitch.

  “You’d better stay still or you’ll injure yourself even more,” Marian said. “On second thought, why don’t you jump up and down for a while? With luck, you might fall off onto the tracks and break every bone in your body.”

  He started screaming at her—a gurgly, incoherent stream of curses, calling her every filthy name he’d ever heard. Marian just waited him out. But after he’d finished, he gulped in several mouthfuls of air and started in all over again.

  Marian sighed and went over to hunker down beside him. “If you don’t shut up right now,” she said pleasantly, “do you know what I’m going to do? I am going to shoot you.” She unholstered her gun.

  He shut up.

  She replaced the gun and went back to Holland, who was making a gesture with one hand that she interpreted to mean he wanted to sit up. He was still dizzy with pain, but no longer seemed on the verge of passing out. She eased one arm around his shoulders and helped him to a sitting position; he slumped against her, resting his head against her bosom. Carefully she put both arms around him. “Does that hurt?” When he didn’t answer, she left them there. Marian wished he could retreat into sleep; that might bring him some relief. She kissed the top of his head.

  And sniffed. Some sickly sweet, perfumy smell. “What have you got on your hair? You smell like a Turkish … barbershop.”

  His lips moved.

  “What?”

  He tried to say something, but Marian couldn’t make it out. She put her ear down close to his mouth.

  “Let’s screw,” he whispered weakly.

  When Gloria Sanchez and her team came in, they found Marian both laughing and crying over the naked, battered man she held cradled in her arms.

  Epilogue

  The Nova Scotia sun was kinder than the one currently broiling New York. Holland sat in a porch chair staring out at the Atlantic Ocean, resting his chin on his two hands clasping the head of his cane. A pleasant breeze blew in off the ocean, tangy with the scent of saltwater. Inside the house, Marian was talking on the phone.

  Across the narrow street and down a small rise was one end of a public dock. Holland watched a family arrive and start readying a sailboat for an outing. The family’s two small children began playing a game that involved bouncing a ball against the steps that led up to the street.

  The house was in Yarmouth, and it belonged to Abby James and Ian Cavanaugh. They hadn’t owned it long; they’d stayed there only twice themselves and only briefly both times. Consequently the house still had a somewhat impersonal feel to it … except for the books. Abby couldn’t stand an empty bookshelf.

  Marian came out of the house and sat down on the top step of the porch.

  “Was that Murtaugh?” Holland asked.

  “Yes. He says Rita Galloway’s trial is scheduled to begin next week.”

  “Both of the Fairchildren on trial for murder, brother and sister. But separate trials, for different murders.” His eyes turned inward. “I owe that man a lot.” He meant Murtaugh.

  “We both do.” Marian had explained how the captain had organized the hunt, drawing upon all the resources available to him and even a few that shouldn’t have been. “He wouldn’t even let me thank him.”

  The two children were running up and down the steps from the dock, calling out incomprehensible commands to each other in whatever game they were playing. Holland asked, “What are Rita Galloway’s chances?”

  “Of getting off? Fairly good, I’d guess. Once it hit the news that it was her own brother who manipulated her into killing her husband, that won her a lot of sympathy. She was Fairchild’s weapon. He’s the puppet master, she’s the puppet.”

  “You want her to get off, don’t you?”

  Marian took her time in answering. “No, I don’t,” she finally said. “She took a life. I don’t know what kind of man Hugh Galloway was—I never did get a fix on him. The only times I saw him, he was either ferociously angry or visibly controlling his anger. Maybe he was every bit the bastard Rita said he was. But that didn’t give her the right to kill him. And she killed him for something he didn’t even do. She had a number of alternatives, and she picked the worst possible course of action open to her. No, Rita Galloway belongs in prison.”

  “Marian the Moralist.”

  She shrugged. “It’s why we need law. Personal justice can so easily go wrong.”

  The two kids were playing in the street now, trying to see which of them could bounce their ball the highest. Holland used his cane to lever himself out of his chair. He walked slowly over to stand near Marian. “This is a very handsome cane,” he remarked. It was made of carved cherrywood and was a gift from Kelly Ingram. “I’m going to hang on to it. It should come in handy when I reach my crusty old curmudgeon stage.”

  “Oh? When’s that? Next week?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  The children’s ball came bouncing up against the porch steps, barely missing Marian’s legs. The two kids came running after it.

  Holland raised his cane in the air and shook it. “You get that ball out of here, you young whippersnappers!” The kids giggled and ran back down to the dock with their ball. Holland turned to Marian. “How was that?”

  “Not bad. Your voice needs more of a quaver, though.”

  “I’ll work on it.” He lowered himself to the front step beside her. “If Rita Galloway does get off, she’s going to try to get Bobby back.”

  “Then she’s got a fight on her hands. The court gave Walter Galloway custody and he’s not going to give it up just because she beat the rap.”

  “Which would be better for the boy?”

/>   “To stay with his grandfather, I think. The old man had the sense to hire the nanny that Fairchild found for Bobby. She seems to be doing a good job as a mother substitute.”

  “And when Walter Galloway dies? Do the courts ever give custody to nannies?”

  “It has happened. That probably would be the best thing in Bobby’s case. They could stay on in the Sutton Place house and avoid still another relocation. Bobby needs stability more than anything else.”

  Down below on the dock, the family was ready to leave. Marian and Holland watched as the sailboat drifted away, graceful as a bird in flight as the sails slowly began to bellow outward when they caught the wind.

  “When my legs are better,” Holland said, “we should rent a sailboat.”

  Marian cleared her throat. “I don’t really care for boats.”

  “You know, neither do I. It’s just that when one is staying in a seaside resort like Yarmouth, it somehow seems a dereliction of duty not to be doing something on, in, or under the water.”

  The sailboat was smaller now, its wake barely visible. Another sailboat slid into view, heading in the same direction as the first.

  “Holland. I’m going to move in with you.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve played nursemaid long enough. I can get around all right now.”

  “No. I mean I’m going to move in with you.”

  He slowly swiveled his head toward her. “Permanently?”

  “Permanently. It turns out I’m one of those stupid people who nearly have to lose a thing before they realize how precious it is. I’m moving in with you. I’ve made up my mind, so don’t argue about it.”

  Then Holland gradually began to smile, the first genuine smile she’d seen from him since his ordeal. The remnants of pain lingering in his face seemed to ease a little. He was still smiling as he looked back out at the ocean.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  About the Author

  Barbara Paul is the author of numerous short stories and novels in both the detective and science fiction genres. Born in Maysville, Kentucky, she went on to attend Bowling Green State University and the University of Pittsburgh, earning a PhD in theater history and criticism. She has been nominated for the Shamus Award for Best PI Short Story, and two of her novels, In-Laws and Outlaws and Kill Fee, have been adapted into television movies. After teaching at the University of Pittsburgh for a number of years, she retired to write full-time. Paul currently resides in Sacramento.