“Are you going to kill everyone?” Jane asked directly. “And then what? You can’t get out of here.”
“Shut up!” She stole a glance at Jane, but her attention was on the edge of the woods.
“You’ll have to shoot at the police when they come to investigate,” Jane taunted. “And then what?”
“I said shut up,” Her eyes widened. William Andrews came out into the open ground, clutching the pistol across his chest. He was hunched over, clearly in pain, but was walking steadily along the footsteps that led to the front door.
Kay gasped. “Oh God, no!” escaped from her lips. Then louder, “Robert…”
Jane saw Bill cross in front of the window, making no effort to conceal himself nor taking any precaution against what might be awaiting him inside. Then she watched Kay move away from the window, set herself at the entry, and aim the shotgun at the front door. When Bill opened the door, he would step directly into the line of fire. Jane screamed and raced across the living room.
46
The gun quickly swung toward her. Then the door burst open. The gun started back, wavering uncertainly.
“Kay!” Bill screamed. He tried to spin back out of the doorway.
The gun decided on his direction just as Jane grabbed for the barrel. The blast was more a roar than a sharp crack. The door exploded into splinters. The doorframe to the right of the opening tore away, and the narrow window next to it simply vanished. Jane sprawled on top of Kay as the two women slammed to the floor. The shotgun bounced against the wall.
“Kay! Don’t!” It was Bill’s voice screaming outside the door. A second later he turned in through the battered opening, braced himself for a second to catch his balance, and dropped the pistol he had been cradling. He saw the women rolling over each other as they both tried to reach for the shotgun. Bill pushed the shotgun away with his foot. He held out a hand to Jane, and she jumped up to take it.
“Get the gun,” Bill told her, pointing to the revolver he had let fall by the door. Jane took just an instant to make sure he was steady on his feet. Then she scooped up the gun she had fired at him only minutes earlier. She didn’t aim it at the woman who had now gotten to her feet.
Bill pushed away from the wall and made his way to a chair, where he let himself collapse. At the sight of his effort, Jane no longer cared about Kay Parker. At that moment, Bill was all that was important to her. She picked up the telephone, taking glimpses up from the dial pad to keep track of Kay Parker. Kay was standing in the entrance foyer, glaring back at her. The discarded shotgun was a good two paces away from her.
“I need an ambulance—my husband has been shot,” Jane snapped into the telephone. A brief pause, and then she gave her name and the address of the chalet. “And call the police. The person who shot him is still here.” Another pause. “Don’t tell me about the roads. It’s a critical wound. Life or death. Hurry!” She listened and then hung up the phone.
Her husband needed her full attention, but she was afraid to take her eyes off Kay Parker. “Get a towel from the kitchen,” she ordered.
Kay laughed scornfully. “Get it yourself!”
Jane raised the pistol in both hands. “I’ll fire this before I have to put it down.”
The smirk disappeared from Kay’s face. Would Jane really fire? She saw her take careful aim, pointing the gun at her knees. “I’ll get it,” she said, already starting toward the kitchen. The pistol panned to follow her movements.
Jane glanced down at Bill. His face was white and his jaw set with pain. She approached cautiously and unzipped the windbreaker. She tried not to react to the bloodstain that was spread across his left shoulder, down across his chest and into his sleeve. She could see the entry wound, just under his shoulder.
She pulled back quickly when Kay approached with a stack of dishtowels. “Put them in his lap,” she ordered. Then she gestured with the gun. “Stand over there by the door. Away from that shotgun.” Her tone was all business. Kay obeyed quietly. Jane went to one knee next to her husband, folded a towel, and pressed it against the wound. He winced, but then forced a smile. Jane didn’t know the extent of the damage, but she knew she had to stop the bleeding. Gently, she titled him forward. There was more blood on the back of his shirt, surrounding a broad tear. The bullet had done more damage coming out than it had going in. She folded another towel, again stealing glances at the woman by the door. It was difficult to hold the gun while she worked to cover the wounds, but she was afraid to put it down. The muzzle waved randomly.
Jane settled him so that the back of the chair held the packing against the exit wound. She raised Bill’s right hand across his chest. “What do I do now?” she asked him. “Whiskey … painkiller?”
“I’m okay,” he managed. “It hurts like a bitch, but I’m still
strong … still thinking.” He didn’t look strong, and she wasn’t sure he was thinking.
“I’ll get you a drink, I think. That’s right, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “As long as the sun is over the yardarm.”
She aimed again, assuring Kay that she hadn’t forgotten about her. Then she leaned into the dining room to get the liquor bottle. At that moment Kay Parker leaped out through the open doorway.
“Jesus!” Jane raced after her. Before she reached the splintered door, she heard the car door slam. When she turned through the doorway, the engine growled and started. The car went into reverse and backed away, its rear wheels spinning as they buzzed across the snow. Jane stopped and set herself in firing position.
Kay was totally vulnerable. She was leaning forward, trying to see out the windowshield, which her breath was quickly fogging. When she shifted into drive, the rear end began to fishtail. She was plowing forward slowly; slow enough for Jane to have gotten off three or four clear shots through the windshield and side window. But she couldn’t force herself to squeeze the trigger.
“Let her go!” It was Bill, who had gotten as far as the front steps, his hand still up to his chest. “Just let her go.” This time it wasn’t an order but rather a plea.
Jane kept the gun raised. “I’m just trying to make sure she doesn’t change her mind. She can go all the way to hell as far as I’m concerned.”
He went down the steps, reached around, and took the gun out of her hand. He tried to turn her and lead her back into the house, but Jane kept glaring until the back of the car disappeared around the turnoff and onto the main road.
47
Kay Parker was locked in fear. Her lover was dead. She had just fired a shotgun at her husband. The police were on the way, and the eight-year cover-up of Selina Royce’s murder was about to be lifted. She was running for her freedom.
There was no way she was going to prison. She had already served more than enough time for killing Selina. She had been in exile for eight years, hiding in her apartment and using the dead woman’s name. For all that time she had been afraid to contact any of the old friends who had once worshipped at her feet, afraid to take even a small step back into society, afraid to make a friend who might learn too much about her. Robert Leavitt had been her only solace—really, her only reason for living. And now he was gone. Her hopes of moving back into the world, even with Selina’s identity, were completely dashed.
“Go ahead, kill me, you bitch” was what she had hissed when Jane stood in the driveway and aimed her gun. “Pull the damn trigger.” But the car had found a bit of traction and snaked its way out of the driveway. Now she was on the road, which was still dangerous but nevertheless manageable at a decent speed. She was in low gear, steering carefully and trying to keep her foot off the brake.
She had no idea where she was going. Certainly not back to Paris for another appearance in the role of Selina. Or to New York, where there were still important people who might recognize her before she had a chance to alter her appearance. It seemed that there was no life left for her, just as it had been when she caught Selina coming down from the bedroom and fired both barrels. A
t that instant the life she had known was over. A trial… prison … disgrace. It had looked completely hopeless until Robert had shown her an escape. He had come up with the idea to switch identities and bury the headless corpse in her place. He had arranged for her life in Paris. She had fled the murder scene and disappeared out of the country on Selina’s passport. Now she needed another plan. Where could she go? How would she hide? She needed Robert with her now!
It was Robert who had made her exile bearable. “I’ll take care of you,” he had promised. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll keep on loving you.” He had been true to his word, but now he was gone. There was no one to save her, to love her, and keep her alive. This time she was on her own.
The car began to skid, its rear end sliding toward the mountain and then, when she corrected, out toward the void that lay beyond the road’s edge. She steered frantically, trying to get the car back on track, knowing that she would lose all control if she touched the brakes. It straightened out in the center of the road. With her foot off the gas, the car began to slow. When she touched the accelerator, she was back in control and able to take the breath that seized in her throat.
Bill slumped into the sofa and let Jane lift his feet onto the coffee table. The pain had become dull rather than intense. As far as he could tell, the bleeding had stopped. But he was having trouble focusing on the details of the room and even on the features of Jane’s face. When he tried to speak, the best he could manage were half sentences. Jane tried to be upbeat. “Your color is coming back. It’s just a shoulder wound, nothing life-threatening.” Every few seconds she would repeat, “The medics will be here any minute.” But, in truth, she was afraid that she was losing him. He was less and less responsive. His clothes were blood-soaked, and the folded towels were showing a stain. She could only guess how much blood he had lost outside in the woods.
She was saying “medics” to imply a skilled medical emergency team. But she remembered the few peeling buildings and the two-room police station in Mountain Ridge. Was there even a doctor? How far away was the best excuse for a hospital? How long would it take to stabilize him from shock and get the lost blood back into his system? How long to get a surgeon to start repairing his shoulder?
She had no recollection of pulling the trigger. He had appeared out of the trees so suddenly, she had acted on impulse. But the image of his toppling forward was there in terrible detail. The crack of the gunshot. The smell of the burned gunpowder. The shocked expression that flickered for an instant in her husband’s eyes. The blood on the snow. How could she have thought he would ever hurt her? Why did she try to run from him? How could she have tried to kill him?
Jane heard his breathing, suddenly more labored. “Jesus, where are you?” she screamed at the police. They weren’t going to make it in time.
————
The police Jeep was halfway up the road, its roof lights blinking even though the chief hardly expected to encounter traffic. He was doing the best he could, in a four-wheel drive with the engine laboring. Most of the snow had melted off, but there were still long white patches that were slick and dangerous. Rush to the rescue and he might never get there at all! Besides, he wasn’t counting on finding someone to arrest or someone to save. The drive was eerily similar to the one he had taken years ago, when the victim was shattered beyond recognition and the killer had vanished. The woman said that she was Mrs. Andrews and that her husband had been shot. If William Andrews had been killed, he wouldn’t be doing any investigating. The state boys would be all over the place within an hour, taking their orders from the media tycoon’s next-in-command.
The emergency medical specialist was in the pickup truck that was following the Jeep. The driver, who owned the general store and had taken medical training as part of his volunteer fireman commitment, kept pulling close, hoping that he could encourage Pete to drive faster. In his two years of medical service he had never had a case where a life hung in the balance. The bloodiest thing he had ever seen was a fisherman’s foot that had caught in his outboard motor. In his most serious case, the patient was already dead, his body fished out of a lake hours after his boat capsized. But still, he wanted to hurry. He remembered from his courses at the firehouse that in emergency medicine, time is the killer. A wound that was superficial when incurred could be beyond repair only a few hours later. Oxygen never seemed to revive people who had already died.
Kay saw the blinking police lights appear on the switchback below. “Don’t panic!” she admonished herself. She had to stay calm and in charge. There was no room for her to turn around. She could never get away by backing up. Nor could she even consider surrendering. She couldn’t survive an arrest. The grim photographs of her entering and leaving police stations in handcuffs. The prison cell. The mousy attorneys trying to line their pockets and get their faces in front of the cameras. And the trial, with the daily headlines of her jealous murder, her years in hiding, her adultery with her husband’s best friend. Not the kind of ending the fabulous Kay Parker could allow. Not as flattering as the global sympathy that had followed the announcement of her murder at the hands of an intruder.
She began to see the shape of the car beneath the blinking lights. It had pulled to the center of the road and stopped. A man stepped out of the driver’s side and began waving a flashlight. His hand was raised, an unmistakable signal for her to stop. The police weren’t going to let her pass.
Kay stepped down on the accelerator. She thought of turning to the mountain side of the road and passing the police car on her right. But there was another car right behind, parked in the inside lane. She had no choice. Still adding speed, she aimed at the officer who was trying to flag her down.
For a moment he held his ground, waving at her furiously. But as she bore down on him, he dove across the headlights of his own car, leaving an escape path between the police car and the road’s edge. Kay eased over until the side of her car was dinging against the guardrail. She flashed past the roadblock and steered back toward the center of her lane, her face now giddy at her triumph. There was no way that Kay Parker would let herself be stopped by an ordinary policeman.
The rear end began to slip. She had used too much speed and turned back too abruptly. She turned into the skid and hurtled across the road toward the face of the mountain. A quick correction brought the front of the car around just as the rear tires found traction. The car raced to the edge. The cable of the primitive guardrail snapped like a piano string, scarcely altering the car’s momentum. A second later it was gone, over the edge.
It fell a hundred feet before striking the sheer side of the mountain, where it sent up a small fireball. Then it cartwheeled back out into space, burning at its edges and leaving a smoky trail. After another hundred feet it hit the lake, nose first, so the splash was minimal. It dove through the surface and disappeared in an instant.
“Jesus!” Pete couldn’t believe what he had seen. He was still laboring back to his feet when the car had crashed through the guardrail and gone over the side. He ran to the shattered cables. Halfway down there was a small fire oozing into the crevices of the rocks. Below that he saw the lake, with a few concentric rings moving out from a rough patch of water. The car had vanished.
“We have to get down there,” he told the medic, who had come up beside him.
“Down there?” the man asked incredulously.
Pete started back to his car. “There might be someone still alive down there.”
“Not as likely as someone being still alive up there.” The medic pointed up to the top of the mountain.
Pete thought for an instant, and nodded in agreement. He got back into the Jeep and continued up the road. No one could have survived that fall, he reasoned. And it wasn’t likely the car would ever be found. He’d round up a couple of the local divers to take a look. But the lake filled a canyon between two sheer rock faces. No one had ever found the bottom.
The volunteer fireman rushed directly to Bill and began working
with urgency. When he snapped open his aluminum medical kit, his hands moved knowingly to the instruments and medicines he needed. “Blood plasma,” he said, lifting a plastic bag. “Hold it as high as you can.” Jane obeyed.
He shone a light into Bill’s eyes. “Okay,” he announced.
“What? What’s okay?”
“He’s okay. Not in shock. Still a decent pulse. We’ll get him stable and airlift him out to Lake Placid. They have a pretty decent trauma unit.” He called to the policeman, who was examining what little was left of the front door. “Call the medevac for me, will you, Sergeant, I have them standing by.”
Pete went to the phone and made the call. “Fifteen minutes,” he told the medic, who nodded in response. He was busy spreading antiseptic over Bill’s wounds.
“J. J. Warren, isn’t it?” Pete said to Jane as he took the plasma bag from her. “Didn’t I tell you to find another story?”
“I can explain all that,” she answered.
“I’m sure you can. And while you’re at it, maybe you can explain that car that went over the cliff back down the road a ways?”
“The cliff? She went over the cliff?” Jane was stunned. She looked down at her husband, who was suddenly alert.
“She? Can you give me a name, because I don’t think we’re ever going to find her. The car went into the lake.”
She kept her eyes on Bill, but his expression told her nothing. It was up to her to decide. “Her name is Selina Royce. She came here to kill my husband. She was in love with him and couldn’t give him up.”
The First Wife Page 32