More Bitter Than Death

by Dana Cameron

  At first I was just angry with Jay—angry with what he’d tried to do to me, tried to do with our friendship, angry with his lack of self-control when it came to gambling and the thought of the sites and information that he’d cost the world forever. Then I started to think about what he must have been going through, how afraid he must have been to be willing to compromise so much, and what threats must have been hanging over him.

  Of course, that didn’t stop him from alerting his “friends” to the presence of Special Agent Widmark with pictures from his cell phone at the reception. Widmark, who’d been trying to unearth the connection between him, Garrison, and the mob. They’d been out there, the night Garrison’s death was announced, shooting at Widmark, and they tried again when I’d followed him into the woods. It didn’t stop him from shooting at me that night I went to investigate the hospitality suite, or letting his associates know that I was outside, so they could take a shot at me, a sitting duck.

  It was the fact that he actually made me feel outrage and pity for an old man I disliked so heartily that let anger win in the end. The notion of Garrison’s fear, in his last conscious moments, the image of his beret soaked in blood on the ice, was what finally tipped the scales for me.

  I was left sorting through this unpleasant collection of emotions and memories as I headed for my room when Duncan hurried up alongside me.

  “Got a minute?”

  Considering I’d only recently dismissed him as a killer, that I’d just been in a struggle over a gun with someone I counted as a friend, that he’d turned another friend against me, and that I’d learned that he’d fudged the conclusions on his dissertation, I thought I was remarkably gracious.

  “What?”

  “Look, can we go in? Just for a second?” he said hastily, still unsure of where he was and where I was.

  I held the door open and he followed me in quickly.

  “Super, thanks,” he said, when the door had shut behind us. It was just the two of us, him turning it on and me with my arms across my chest, again. He looked around, and suddenly realized what seemed unfamiliar to him. “Wow, it’s clean in here.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Housekeeping came while I was talking to the cops.”

  “No, I mean, no piles of your crap everywhere. Books, clothes, that’s what I remember. This Brian must really be having an effect on you.”

  Suddenly, I felt my blood boiling: He doesn’t get to talk about Brian, not after what I found out about him. “I just don’t think the housekeepers should have to suffer because I’m a slob, that’s all.”

  “Whoa, hey, no harm meant.” Duncan realized that he wasn’t starting off on the right foot. “I’m sure I gave the wrong impression last night. It’s just that I’m so interested in this job. I was tired, then, I was probably one or two over my limit, I came off too strong. I’d like to apologize for that.”

  “Great.” I was convinced that he had to have known there was a chance that Scott had spoken to me about the Haslett data, but there was no sign of that in his nervousness. In fact, he relaxed as soon as I answered him.

  “So, I’d like to ask you again, if you’d reconsider writing a letter for me. I’m sure it would be a big help, and I’d really appreciate it.”

  The phrase “really appreciate it” was heavily freighted with promise.

  “You never give up, do you,” I said. The thought flitted through my head that if I said yes, he’d be out of my hair forever. I thought about what I’d be willing to pay for that, a little closure, if there were promises being made, and shivered at the possibility. “You just…don’t. Ever give up.”

  He mistook my tired smile for affection, and he unleashed a twenty-gigawatt smile right back at me. “That’s me. Stubborn as hell.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I wanted to slap the stupid grin off his face, I wanted to batter him into an unrecognizable paste. I wanted to eradicate him from the planet, from my past, from memory. I’d tried denial, I’d tried being human, but nothing seemed to work.

  And I don’t believe in closure.

  Funny thing was, something Nolan was always drumming into my head chose this moment to appear. He was always saying, if you miss hitting your opponent in one place, go for something else, but keep at it. If you miss swinging with your right hand, kick with the opposite leg. If you’re already moving in one direction, go with it. Make it work for you. If someone pushes you, react, and make it strong. Go for the fight-ending blow to start, but if it doesn’t work, keep eroding your opponent’s will to continue.

  And so this time, instead of merely reacting out of a habit of anger or shame or anything else, I reacted tactically. I found my fighting stance, so to speak, got grounded and analyzed the situation. It didn’t take long, really, because I already had all of the information I needed. Some of it was from a couple of decades ago, some of it was from the past four days. And now I knew what to do with it.

  I looked at Duncan, really gave him a careful going over. He didn’t seemed fazed by that; he was used to people looking at him and enjoyed the sensation. Needed it, really. He’d aged better than some, that was for sure. And I could see past the slight slackening in the facial skin—something I just knew would turn into interesting Redford-style crags someday—where it wasn’t hidden by his beard. The receding hairline that was showing gray in some lights. But it was still Duncan, and he was still good-looking. His mother was right; had we had children, our kids would have had red hair and they would have been gorgeous.

  It wasn’t the signs of aging that made him change for me. He wasn’t so much different from when we were together, and that was the problem. In fact, it suddenly occurred to me that he was even more like the old Duncan than I could have believed possible, and that was because he wanted something from me. I recognized that now, for what it was. Sure, everyone wants something from the one they love, even if it’s just plain old desire. But with Duncan, it was all that and something else as well. I had something he wanted.

  A million years ago, maybe it had been sex or a study partner or maybe, and I was going to admit it to myself for the first time, maybe it was Oscar and what Duncan believed a connection with Oscar would do for him. Maybe he genuinely loved me and just was too chicken to commit to an adult relationship, as he claimed. Even if he had, I now knew that eventually he would have come to believe that he could do better, for whatever reason, because for Duncan, there was no end. There wasn’t a place that he could choose to say, okay, this is what I want, how can I make it better, how can I share it, how can I take a rest? For Duncan, there would always be another goal, one more hill to climb, and then he would receive the ultimate prize.

  Only there was no grand prize, not as he imagined it. And even if there had been, he wouldn’t have been happy with it.

  I saw in him something of what I had been attracted to all those years ago, a lifetime ago. I saw the ambition and the brains and the charisma, and they were still appealing. I also saw how much of that was attractive because it mirrored what I was like in those days, when life was merely a set of hurdles to sail over, and obstacles were simple problems that could be removed by dint of hard work, enthusiasm, determination, and bravura.

  Those were still useful attributes, but they weren’t the only ones. These days, I found that I tired out quicker, and so found other ways instead of brute strength, instead of bashing my head against the wall of accomplishing my goals. I let Brian help, I compromised, I changed my mind, changed my goals, when they weren’t enough to justify their pursuit, because life is too short to waste time. I learned that life is not a zero-sum game, that just because someone else got something, it didn’t mean that I had lost something. I learned that I wasn’t even the most important thing in the world, though I made a hell of a lot more difference to those around me if I took care of myself as if I was. Compromise has all sorts of cheap, tacky connotations. If, however, one thought of it more as finding a scenario where everyone could win most of their objectives and no one was miser
able, then that was a pretty good thing.

  “Can you help me out, Em?” he repeated.

  I took a deep breath. “Not the way you want. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, I am too.” His words were heavy with sarcasm. “So much for acting like adults.”

  I laughed. “Get out of here, Duncan.”

  “Don’t worry.” He reached for the handle of the door. “Oh, by the way, I need to pass something along to you.”

  “Oh?” I waited, figuring he was going to lay some heavy riposte on me, some big exit line. I could live with it, if he needed to cover his ego.

  “Billy Griggs says hello.”

  He hadn’t even moved the door open another inch before I was on him. I slammed the door shut, and before Duncan knew what was happening, I’d shoved him as hard as I could against the opposite wall.

  “Billy Griggs? What the fuck do you mean by that? You have no business—none—even thinking about anything to do with—”

  “Holy shit, Emma!” Duncan was scared. He tried to move along the wall, away from me, but I blocked his way with my elbow, sticking my finger in his face. There was no way he was going anywhere, as far as I was concerned. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “You tell me! What the hell do you know about Billy Griggs, and what makes you think you have any right to mention him to me?”

  “Goddamn it, Emma, I met him out in Chicago, last year. This guy came up to me in one of the bars outside the hotel where a couple of us historical types were hanging out. He said he knew you, wanted me to say hello, that’s all.” Duncan didn’t make any effort to get away from me; he seemed too afraid to try.

  “Don’t lie to me, Duncan! Billy Griggs is dead! I watched his murder, years ago, back at Penitence Point. Billy is dead.”

  Duncan looked shaken by my violent response. “Well, then, maybe I’ve got the wrong guy. He was older, maybe in his early sixties? Dark hair, clean shaven. Weather-beaten, been in the field a while, I figured, but well dressed.”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound like anyone I know.” I backed off slowly. Maybe Duncan had only made a horrible mistake. If it was a practical joke, an attempt to get under my skin, he’d be very, very sorry he’d ever tried. “And you’re sure that was the name he gave you?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. He came up to me at the bar, asked if I was Duncan Thayer. When I said yes, he said he was glad he caught me, said that we’d met years ago and he asked after you. I was surprised, because that…was a long time ago. Said he’d been hoping you’d be at that conference, that he’d have a chance to run into you. Then he said, ‘Do me a favor, tell Emma Billy Griggs sends his regards, and that I’ll catch up with her some time next year. Next time I’m in Massachusetts.’”

  A horrible icy knot began to form at the pit of my stomach. “What did he sound like? Did he have an accent?”

  “I dunno, kinda Southern, I guess. I couldn’t tell where from.”

  Dear God. “Duncan, are you sure you’re telling me everything?”

  “Yeah, positive.” He looked at me and swallowed, another old habit he had when he was scared and not going to admit it. “Emma, what’s this about?”

  I started to shake, my head aching like it was in a vise. I stepped away from him.

  It had to be Tony Markham. It was just sick enough. Maybe he’d dyed his hair…and as a former colleague of mine, a Mesoamericanist, the historical archaeologists wouldn’t be so likely to recognize him. The authorities had said he must be dead, but I never believed this, not the way he looked when he killed Billy Griggs while I watched—he was just too evil to let a little thing like a hurricane get him…

  “Emma, what’s your damage?”

  I shook my head, trying to think of something logical to say, something that would make this all go away. Finally, I sat down. It had to be Tony.

  “Emma?”

  “Just something I thought was over with. Don’t worry about it, Duncan. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but it has nothing to do with you.”

  It couldn’t be, I thought. Christ, it never ends, nothing ever ends, can’t I ever be done with something? What was it that Faulkner said? The past is never dead; it’s not even past.

  An hour later, I’d recovered myself, convinced myself that it was a practical joke, on Duncan’s part or someone else’s. Had to be. Maybe it was sick, but people at conferences do sick things, sometimes, in the name of humor.

  Carla caught me on the way to the bar for lunch. “Good conference, Em?”

  “Yeah, sure. Pretty busy,” I said automatically, wondering whether I was capable of eating. The menu was far too familiar to tempt me.

  “You must not have noticed that my sarcasm needle was pinning the irony meter,” she said. “I hardly saw you after the first night or so. I don’t think you went to any of the usual papers you go to, and I saw you not only talking with cops, but also sitting in on the papers where it’s usually just us osteological ghouls hanging out.”

  I struggled to figure out what to say, what she was saying to me.

  “Ah, forget it. Lissa told me. You might have told me yourself.”

  I felt myself flushing, guilty.

  “Hell, Carla, I—”

  “I know, I know, it was a busy weekend for you—I’ve been hearing rumors. And sometime I’d like to know all the details. But in the meantime…” She dug into her bag, once filled with cigars and cards and flyers for her program, and now filled with new books. She handed me a battered forensic anthropology text. “I just picked up the new edition. It’s not going to do you any good with the legalities south of the border here,” she said, “but it should provide some good references to get you started.”

  “Carla, I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s good, because I haven’t got the time to listen; I’m out of here.” She handed me one more thing from her bag. The battered deck of Chippendale cards. “Here. Lissa’s going to be around for a while, and Chris, if he isn’t too hung over, said he wouldn’t mind a game. So give them back to me next year, okay?”

  “Thanks, Carla, I owe you.”

  “Boy, do you ever.” She gave me a hug. “Don’t take any shit from these jokers, Em. Stay in touch.”

  “You too.”

  Later on, I found Meg. I owed it to her to tell her what I knew. She’d been out there, that night at Penitence Point years ago, and she’d saved me, truth be told. She deserved to know, so I told her everything, excepting what I’d learned from Scott about Duncan. That would come out all on its own, I figured, and he was his own punishment.

  I also told her what he’d said about Billy Griggs. She needed to know that, if anyone did. Just in case.

  She listened gravely, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper. Finally she shook her head.

  “I don’t buy it. I think that was the last salvo he had, and it blew up in his face.”

  “But Duncan seemed so surprised by my reaction.” I still really wanted to believe her, desperately wanted her to be right.

  She wasn’t bothered. “I’d be surprised too, if you reacted like that to anything I said! Face it, Emma, and I say this as a friend…” She looked at me, anxious that she wasn’t assuming anything.

  I nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “If he’s always been able to play you, use what he knew about you to get what he wanted, then why couldn’t this be the same thing?”

  I considered it, hoping. “You mean, he’d found out about Billy and Tony and everything, and was just trying to play with my head?” I frowned. “It’s possible.”

  “But he wasn’t expecting you to bite back, this time.” Her face cracked open in a smile of purely malicious glee. “I would have given money to see that.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t, but thanks. And that other stuff”—I shook my head—“feels like it happened in someone else’s lifetime.”

  “It did. Like you said: another life.”

  I was quiet for a moment, then decided I was done with
those thoughts for the moment. “And speaking of other lives…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I notice a bunch of you young’uns aren’t leaving until later tonight.”

  She nodded. “We’ve got a couple of hours until we have to drive people to Manchester and Portland, to the airports. We’re camping out in the bar, until then.”

  “You guys got any money?”

  She snorted. “Are you kidding me? We’re graduate students. The ranks of the eternally impoverished.”

  “Thing is, I’ve got a deck of cards and two friends who are dying to give me more of their hard-earned cash. I was thinking, what’s the point of having graduate students near at hand if you can’t exploit their labor and take away their drinking money?”

  “You think you can beat me at cards?” She threw back her head and laughed. It was fabulous to hear, an epic laugh. “Emma, you know I spent most of my early life traveling between military bases. Poker was an integral part of my early childhood training.”

  “Gosh, I’d think you’d have nothing to worry about, then. But if you’re scared…”

  “Ha! Are you kidding me? You’re giving me a chance to take your money away from you, wipe the floor with you in front of my friends, in front of your friends, and you think I’m going to pass that up?” She laughed again. “When and where?”

  “My room, I’ve got it until late. For some reason, the hotel is being very, very accommodating with me. Say three o’clock?”

  “You got it.” She suddenly turned shy, in that stubborn way of hers; she might hesitate, she might be uncomfortable, but Meg would never back away from what she felt she had to do. “And Emma?”