Charlie could barely catch enough breath to release a stream of invective that should have flipped-off the heavenly finger on the light switch above.
There was a dead man staring at them when they peeked over the crest’s edge. But his eyes didn’t follow Charlie as she pulled herself up on crumbling earth with the help of a butt-shove from the guys below. When she stood finally he stared at her sensible shoes instead.
“Christ, get down, Charlie. The shooter’s still up here for sure.”
And she was pulled to earth once more and it was beginning to piss her off. She had half a mind to turn Libby and her famous knee loose on the other two stooges in this pratfall of an endeavor.
“I’ve never seen him before. Shot in the back of the neck. Looks real surprised.” Mitch.
“White shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up. East Coast maybe.” Kenny.
The guys continued the crime scene investigation dialogue in whispers, looking around for the person with the gun. All Charlie could think of was that it wasn’t Maggie or Luella lying dead there. Maybe they were alive, still in the cottages somewhere. Hiding, waiting for her to come and help them.
The wind ruffled the guy’s hair and the back of his shirt except where blood from his neck had stuck it to his skin. Charlie wondered if they’d try to pin this one on Maggie too. There were all kinds of different agendas stacking up here. All the deaths did not have to have come about by the same people or motive. But blaming it all on Maggie could be very convenient for both the killer, killers, and more so for overworked authorities trying to resolve the murders.
“This is a real dangerous place to be,” Kenny reminded them. “How do we get to the cottages, Hilsten, without getting picked off by the sniper? Your call.”
“That’s somebody’s son, husband, dad, brother, boyfriend, meal ticket,” the actor/producer said righteously.
“Look at it this way, he won’t ever have to linger in a nursing home.” Kenny pushed her to move away from the dead loved one and crawl after Mitch toward a fake foundation of a fake stone ruin of antiquity. The whole place was like a planned copy of a ruin rather than the ruin of a copy of an ancient ruin, when you looked at it while slithering along on your belly—sort of a snake’s eye view of man’s folly.
When the going gets tough, Charlie gets philosophical, herself reminded her, and totally useless.
Another shot pinged off the fake stone next to Charlie’s head and her contact lens went painfully crazy so fast she just removed it—all her eye paraphernalia back in her purse in the metallic blue Ram. Her tears provided the eyewash to move the offending speck of fake foundation rock to a corner where she could snag it out.
“You think that was a rifle or a pistol, Stretch?”
“I don’t know the difference from this end of it, Shorty, but the guy’s a good shot.”
While they argued over sound and velocity and whatever, Charlie snuck a peek with her one good eye before one of them pulled her back to earth.
“Jesus, Charlie, will you—”
“It’s a girl.”
“What’s a girl?”
“The shooter.” Knowing she wasn’t supposed to do this, Charlie stuck the lens on her tongue to clean and lubricate it the only way she had now, not even a bottle of water to rinse it, and stuck it back in. If she got shot, this sin and probably all the others wouldn’t mean much.
“Okay, stand up, all of you, with your hands behind your head,” Caroline VanZant said above them. “Believe me, I have nothing to lose by killing all three of you.”
Thirty-Two
“Why didn’t you just shoot them too?” Snappy number, Ruth Ann Singer, snapped. “Might as well, you’re shooting everybody else and now they’ll rat on us.”
“For what?” Caroline’s eyeglasses magnified her sadness and the redness.
“For what we’re doing to them right now.” Ruth Ann was talking tough but looking terrified.
They herded Charlie and the guys into a side door of the Spa, ground floor at this level, which varied with the terrain. But this was the pool level and they were guided by Caroline’s rifle into the exercise-machine room, forced to sit on the floor where Sue Rippon tied their wrists with elastic exercise cords to some of the heavy equipment Kenny had thought so cool.
“Caroline, please tell me what you know about Maggie and Luella,” Charlie pleaded.
“Let’s just say they’re feeling no pain.” She and the rifle turned to go. Sue and Ruth Ann couldn’t leave fast enough. They were definitely not comfortable with this.
“Wait. Are they alive?”
“Not for long. Or you either.”
“And she’d seemed like such a sweet little old lady,” Kenny whispered when Caroline had closed the door behind her.
“I knew it. They’re still alive. We’ve got to hurry.” Charlie set to squirming. “Watch to see if anyone’s coming back.”
“Careful, Charlie, these things are tight. Now’s not the time to break something.” Kenny pulled, pushed, and grunted against the restraints too. The three of them were attached too far apart to help each other and the machinery was attached to skids bolted to the floor.
“Relax, Cowper. She can fold her hands nearly in half vertically. And she’s highly motivated about now.”
“He’s right, Kenny, save your strength for later. We may need it.”
The walls seemed half glass with the show windows into the hall leading to the pool. Part of the pool was even visible. And then another wall had windows to the outside where a few shrubby things tossed in the wind off the Pacific.
When Charlie folded her hands, they were barely wider than her wrists—the right one particularly collapsible—and it took less time for her to free herself than Mitch and the two of them to free Kenny because they had to pry the knots loose.
“You know, Charlie, what Caroline VanZant implied about the girls being alive may not be true. I mean don’t give up—but consider the shock and stress she’s under.”
“She’s going around shooting people with a rifle, probably not in her right mind,” Kenny agreed. “Nice old ladies don’t usually do that. Which doesn’t mean she isn’t to be feared. Maybe more so.”
“Okay, what do we do now?” Charlie asked to hurry things up. They spoke in whispers behind a large compressor of some kind at the back of the main building. It in turn was hidden by a boxed-in enclosure of redwood.
“Hell, this is your show.”
“Yeah, what do you want us to do?”
“I want Mitch, who can duck behind things better, to sneak out the back way and figure what and who are going on between here and the earthquake crevice and to keep a low profile—just watch, no heroics. Kenny, I want you to do the same between here and the parking lot. I’ll snoop around the cottages. We meet back here in thirty minutes to compare news and decide further what to do. We’ve all got cells. Set yours on stun and move out—”
“Wait just a damn minute, I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah,” Mitch agreed. “We were talking about guarding you, not—”
“My show, remember? You both said so. I want information and help, not heroics.” She didn’t know about setting cells on stun—but she left their faces that way when she took off. Whether they decided to follow her wishes or not, both had the good sense not to follow her openly. Charlie’s aching gut knew there was little time to waste arguing with them.
It had been threatening on and off to storm for a couple of days, which usually meant nothing would happen. Charlie hadn’t had much time or inclination to check TV or newspaper for weather. She could probably check it on this freaking cell phone—they did everything but inject plasma these days, but she frankly did not want to deal with it now. Still, she was aware that it was very dark for this time of day—that there would be no colorful sunset and that the wind still smelled like rain.
Why hadn’t the sheriff’s department or the Feds rushed to check out the shot that killed the man in the tie at the ruins area
or noticed Caroline and the girls hustling three unarmed people back to the Spa’s main building?
Charlie dropped to the ground between a cottage and a shedlike building at the sound of muted throat-clearing and the hesitant crunching of gravel and with no help from the boys. They would have been proud. The person passed very quietly otherwise and on the other side of a porch, gone before she could push herself up far enough to get a look so she moved, crouching, around the building to see a man bent low, skulking off toward the crevice, arms wrapped around something she couldn’t see. She stepped out further toward the path to get a better look and something crunched.
He turned and she dropped. Everything but her heart and the wind gone silent.
Charlie lay still as stone, trying not to breathe—which was pretty stupid even for her. The titanium plate in her neck ached. The contact she’d washed up with germy spit decided to be irritated, but worst of all was the incipient sneeze joyously demanding her attention. All she needed now was gas.
Concentrating on stifling all body functions, she took awhile to register the presence of yet another soul creeping about at this particular area on the grounds.
And then aware of a quiet struggle, but still noisy enough to apparently cover the “skinx” she made to thwart the full blown sneeze because the scuffling and muted grunting continued on as if she’d made no sound at all.
Charlie turned her head to peer at the struggle through one painfully watery eye and saw only shadowy shoe soles as the coupled combatants scuffled flat-out on the sharp grit of the small stones lining the path. Two men, she either didn’t know or couldn’t recognize in her present condition, finally tore apart when one banged the other’s head down on rough pebbles so hard he let out an honest-to-god “arga” and lay still. The other man then picked up an overturned box and gathered papers and other things strewn about to fill it up and carry right past Charlie but on the run and in the opposite direction from which it had come.
Charlie had no idea how long she and the downed man lay silent before she got up the nerve to lift herself far enough to explore what she had tripped over. It appeared to be a laptop computer that had been viciously treated even before it met her. Somebody trying to destroy a hard drive?
The man still on the path jerked and whimpered. Her cell vibrated in her pocket. “Charlie, nix the meeting place. Somebody’s there. Stay away from the path. What’s happening at your end?”
She crawled away from the injured man, the ruined computer, and the path before answering in a whisper, “Sneak along the back edge of the row of cottages along the path on the left. I’ll watch for you. Is Kenny with you?”
“Yeah. You hide. We’ll be there,” Mitch whispered back.
The man on the path gurgled, then lay still. Charlie stood to peek around the corner of the last cottage on the left of the path at the man on the ground. Her vision was not good right now, but by closing one eye and staring hard she thought she recognized the other Charlie, Charles Green. This she deduced by the eyeglasses flung to the side of the path and what appeared to be safari shorts.
But it didn’t make sense that he would be skulking toward the earthquake crevice with the box instead of away from it. He lay very still. She rather thought he might be dead. Would Maggie be blamed for this death too, if Charlie found her before Caroline VanZant? She had no proof but held to the fantasy that Maggie was hiding from Caroline. If not, why was she still alive? Or had been when Caroline and company tied Charlie and the guys up in the exercise room.
There were new footsteps on the path and Charlie slid away for her rendezvous, startled by a lightning flash that blinded her rather than revealing anything. She froze to get her bearings and blink contacts back in place. Her titanium implant responded to the lightning in a really weird way, her teeth tasted metallic—sort of. Odd-colored spots swirled on the inside of her eyelids.
“Charlie?” someone whispered in her ear. A warm arm around her shoulder eased the tautness.
“Why was he running away from the Spa with the evidence, Kenny? He should have been trying to save it.” She opened her eyes to find both guys snuggled around her, shushing her.
“We don’t know what’s going on either,” Mitch whispered close to her ear. “Other than a lot of highjinx. You sure that was the FBI’s Charles Green?”
“No, but he dressed like him and wore glasses. What have you guys been doing?”
“I was watching the path farther down, closer to the body. It’s still there. I saw one guy racing up toward the Spa with a box that appeared to be heavy.” He’d snuck back behind the cabins looking for Charlie, apparently passed her and met Kenny just short of the redwood compressor cage.
“That’s when we called you, Charlie. I’ve got bad news.”
“Christ, Cowper, you don’t have to get brutal here. Poor kid’s had enough stress.”
“Charlie’s a big girl—she can handle the truth. This is getting very serious here, Hilsten. Just because you’re old enough to be, doesn’t make you her father.”
“You found Maggie? And Luella? Dead?” Charlie didn’t even have to try to whisper now. She thought she’d choke.
“No, Charlie, I found Libby’s Jeep Wrangler. In the parking lot.”
Thirty-Three
The light was poor, nobody had a flashlight. Charlie wanted everyone to split up and search a cottage to save precious time, but the guys refused to leave her side.
“I really don’t think I was struck by lightning.”
“You were close enough to the strike for it to have had some effect. You were in shock when we found you,” Mitch whispered behind her as they entered another cottage, this time by prying open a side window with Kenny’s pocket knife. Some cottages were locked, some not. So far, all were deadly quiet—except for creaking floors, thunder, and wind-driven rain. All three were soaked just sneaking between them, almost refreshing after the lightning bolt.
Charlie, already a basket case, trying to keep her cool and the guys’ testosterone levels in check, now had the added fear for her child thrown into the mix of all the other stuff eating up her guts from the inside out. Maggie and Luella for instance.
“Stop,” Kenny ordered. “I hear something.”
All Charlie saw were shadows, some of them made by wind blowing plant life around outside, and the white basin of an old-fashioned sink. All she heard was her breathing and heartbeat and desire to scream. And then a faint groaning.
“It’s coming from under the floor. Do these places have basements? I’d kill for a flashlight right now.” Charlie crawled on what felt like boards instead of vinyl or carpet, feeling for a seam that cut across the fit of boards—some idea of a metal ring that would lift a trap door in the floor, like in historical films, worried about picking up slivers instead.
And then the groan became a word, “Help me. He-lp me. Ohhhh, oh.”
“It’s coming from outside.” Mitch crawled back out the window. Kenny followed.
“Oh, Jeez,” one of them said and Charlie, still on hands and knees, peeked up over the sill to see three men suddenly illuminated by lightning, lashed by sheets of rain. Charles Green minus his eyeglasses and safari hat staggered up to Kenny and groaned something. His clothes sagged, dripping water, his scalp and the fuzz of hair left on it did too. He swayed toward Kenny.
“What’d he say?” Mitch yelled over the storm.
The stricken man moaned something else and reached for Kenny, started to go down.
“I thought he said he needed a pill and something about his pocket. His medication must be in his pocket.” He began groping in the man’s clothes.
Safari shorts being mostly pockets anyway, Green went down, nearly taking Kenny with him. Mitch knelt to feel his neck. “I think he’s past the need for pills.”
Charlie was about to climb out the window to join them, in the process of deciding which foot to stick out first so she could sort of roll out sideways, when three new figures raced out of the rain haze and off th
e path, stopping to spread their legs and hold handguns out in front of them, ordering both men to put their hands behind their heads. Charlie slipped back to the floor and tried not breathing again.
She lay very still for a long time after the voices quieted outside, heard no footsteps, heavy breathing, throat clearing. Only the storm and the water running in the eaves trough. And that faint groaning sound again. Had they taken Mitch and Kenny off at gunpoint and left poor Agent Charles Green out on the path?
She tried breathing deep and slow, holding the air as long as she could before exhaling, then pushed herself to the windowsill again. Even after blinking her contacts into focus, the path looked and sounded completely empty of people. So, who was doing the moaning? On the heels of that thought there was a faint coughing. It was female. And it came from beneath her. Not outside.
She yearned again for a flashlight.
Think, Greene.
Charlie sat back on the floor under the window and closed her eyes as long as she could stand to, then opened them squinting into the room and toward the floor, hoping a lightning flash wouldn’t blind her night vision again. Shapes—a white sink lay on the floor—a double sink without its faucets, drain pipe, or cupboard. An overturned table of some kind. An upright wooden chair. A closed door to another room or a closet. But the human sounds, faint though they were, were coming from under the floor. A crawl space?
Charlie crawled across the tiny room to the door, reached up for the old-fashioned glass knob. It turned, but the door wouldn’t open. She went back to the window and peered out along the side of the building. There couldn’t be another room over there. It must be the backdoor, or a closet or an entry to an underground room. She climbed out the window and to the back of the building. There was no door here.
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