I'd fallen onto my right side, so that, even while I was wondering if I was dead, I was able to see Michael Eshleman's neck explode in a cloud of red, and his dying cry rip apart the wires that held his jaw together. The jaw dropped like a stone, and Michael followed quickly.
Carlton Runnells, still unhit, was looking toward the woods in panic. When he saw that Michael was down, he hauled up his shotgun and fired blindly toward the woods. Even if he'd known where Arkassian was, he had the gun aimed far too high for the blasts to do any good. Both barrels were empty, but he kept yanking at the triggers right up until Arkassian's round hit him low in the stomach.
He fell screaming, and kept on screaming, and I hope I never hear a human being make a sound like that again. I had barely enough presence of mind to take my finger from the guard and wrap it around the back trigger. For what seemed like forever I lay there, my chest throbbing, Carlton Runnells shrieking like a damned soul, until finally I heard footsteps through the brush behind me, hesitant and infirm, and watched Runnells, still wailing, fumble in the pocket of his coat, bring out a handful of shells, reach for his shotgun, too far away for him to ever touch in his condition, heard Ben Arkassian say, "Ah shit, ah motherfucker," heard him walk past me, finally saw him lifting his rifle to finish Runnells.
I shot him in the back with the Purdey. He went down and didn't move once.
Then I stood up slowly, aching, and examined what I had done. It had made one hell of a hole in Arkassian's back, and, I suspected, a bigger one coming out the other side, though I didn't turn him over to see just then. I didn't want to see any more. And I didn't want to hear Runnells screaming either, but I didn't have any choice. I had to wait for him to die, and from the way he was bleeding I knew it wouldn't take very long.
I took no pleasure in it, despite my past fantasies. It's no fun to watch someone die in pain, even someone you hate, so I took his gun and walked into the woods, where the screams seemed farther away, where I could almost pretend that it was the wind, or bird calls, or the whine of truck tires on some unseen highway across the field.
The sound soon stopped, and when I went back he was dead, just like Michael and Arkassian. I searched Arkassian then, trying to move him and his rifle, a .222, as little as possible, because when I did he seemed to come apart in my hands. The letter I had written and planted for him to find was in his inside jacket pocket. It was sodden with blood and barely legible, but I wasn't going to take any chances. I balled it up and stuck it in the pocket of my coat. Then I placed the Purdey in Runnells's hand and put his finger around the back trigger. On my way home, I would sink the gun that he had been using in the Susquehanna River.
There were two of them, hunting together. The man from New York attacked them, shot the young one first, wounded the older one, who then shot and killed his attacker before he bled to death.
And that would be how it happened. There would be details that didn't match—the way the bodies had fallen, perhaps, or other things—but the basic facts were there, were clear as they could ever be.
I hadn't known, not really, what was going to happen, how things would work out. But this was fine. This was as good as anything could be.
Chapter 17
That Sunday evening I called Ev and told her to come home. She asked me what had happened, but I didn't tell her, not then. I wasn't at the point where I wanted to talk about it.
There was nothing in the Lancaster paper on Monday morning, so I assumed the bodies hadn't yet been found. Ev returned in the afternoon, and that night I told her what I had done, how I had set the whole thing up. I told her about shooting Ben Arkassian too. What I didn't tell her was how I felt about it, but that didn't stop her from guessing.
"You had to do it," she said. "Don't blame yourself for anything."
She had me wrong. I wasn't blaming myself. I didn't like what I had done, but I felt little guilt. I'd dug myself into a hole, and then I had dug my way out again. No one had died who didn't deserve to.
"Is there any way they can trace it to you?" she asked, resting her head against my shoulder as we sat on the couch together.
"I was careful. As careful as I knew how to be. Still, there's always a chance." And there was, I knew that. I didn't feel safe by any means.
The story was on the local news late that night. The newscaster didn't say the men had killed each other—he said the case was under investigation. The paper the next morning didn't tell much more. There were no nice neat "LOCAL PLAYBOY AND BIG CITY GANGSTER IN FATAL SHOOTOUT!!!" headlines. The Intelligencer Journal and the New York Post were worlds apart. What I gleaned was that local authorities were hesitant to come up with such an easy scenario.
So I wasn't surprised when I got a visit the following Friday from Detective Lawrence of New York's finest. We sat in my office, he asked me questions, I avoided answering them.
"It seems peculiar," he told me, "that this should happen so soon after Ben Arkassian shoots through your window."
I asked him how he knew that it had been Arkassian who had done it, and he told me that ballistics tests proved that the slugs that had hit Ev and broken our portrait were from one of the four weapons found in the trunk of Arkassian's car. Since I had told him I hadn't known who Ben Arkassian was before I'd read about his death in the paper, I could only agree that yes, it was most peculiar, and that I had no idea why this Arkassian would want to shoot through my window.
"I think maybe you do," he said. "Tell me more about this job you did for Runnells last year. What was the name of the employee suspected of embezzling?"
I told him I didn't remember.
"Maybe you could check your case records."
I told him that I had lost my records for that case, and he swore at me and called me a liar.
"What are you investigating, Detective?" I asked him.
"The murder of Christopher Townes, that's what."
"Well, from what you've told me of Townes and Arkassian, and from what went down in that field on Sunday, I think that Arkassian already solved it for you."
His smile didn't have a trace of humor in it. "That's sure as hell what somebody wants me to think, isn't it?"
I could have mentioned the cigarette lighter, but Lawrence thought I knew too much as it was. He was a smart boy. He'd figure it out if he hadn't already.
"I'm sorry I can't tell you any more," I said, and in a way it was the truth.
"You'll cooperate, McKain. Or I'll have your license. At the very least."
"You're out of your jurisdiction, Detective. My license isn't yours to give or take away. If you can talk the locals into taking it away from me, do it. I really don't care. But as far as these killings go, you don't have a thing on me. Because there's nothing to have."
He tried to stare me down then, but it didn't work. Like Arkassian, like Runnells, he didn't know that I had nothing to lose. The worst they could do was kill me, and they'd been beaten to the punch.
"There's a piece missing," he said. "And you know what it is. And I'm going to find it, with or without your help."
I nodded. "I hope you do."
Lawrence's missing piece was Carlton Runnells's videotape, and they didn't find it until two months later. It was in a safe in Runnells's bedroom. He had lied to me and to Eshleman. I should have realized that he wouldn't have destroyed it—he enjoyed it too much. I suppose it was a copy that he erased in front of Eshleman. Eshleman would have been easy to fool.
The discovery of the tape caused quite a stir, and was instrumental, I think, in helping the police come to my intended conclusion about the triple slaying—that somehow Townes found out about the tape, that Runnells killed Townes to shut him up, and that Arkassian then killed Runnells and Eshleman in revenge, but not before Runnells was able to take him out as well.
Oh, they questioned me all right—back and forth and up and down. But I denied and denied and denied, and always walked out of police headquarters and never into a cell. They still haven't taken my license,
if they ever intend to. The wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly.
Runnells left no will, in the style of a man who never expected to die. But even if he had, the will of a self-incriminated murderer would have been disregarded when it came to dispersal of ill-gotten gains. At any rate, Runnells died intestate, and his estate went to the Commonwealth, which, I understand, is planning to turn Ravenwood into a state hospice. I like the idea, and find it somehow fitting that the place should continue to be a place of death.
A week after the news broke about the discovery of the tape, I went into Lancaster General for my usual treatment. But this visit was different. After my blood test, I was taken from the treatment room into Dr. Fedder's office, where I sat waiting for fifteen minutes, thinking that this was the day he would come in and tell me that recurrence had set in, that we would have to start the chemotherapy again, that this time it would be harder to beat.
Get ready to die, Mr. McKain. Get ready one more time.
When he finally came in the room, he was smiling, but it was a cautious smile. I was smiling too. But my teeth were clenched, and I could feel my heart racing. My fingers were very cold.
"Mac," he nodded at me, and I nodded back as he sat down at his desk. "I've just been looking at your blood tests." His words were slow and measured. Christ, I thought, how cautious he was. "There has been a change. A change for the better." He shook his head and gave a little laugh. "I don't know why it's so much harder for me to tell a patient news like this—I suppose it's because I don't get to do it very often." He took a deep breath and went on. "I told you . . . when this started . . . that you might have a year, or maybe two, if you were lucky."
I nodded. Now my fingers were freezing. I couldn't feel them at all.
He cleared his throat. "It would appear . . . from the tests we've run on you in the past month or so . . . that there's been no recurrence, and no indication that we can expect one. Now that's not to say you're cured. I don't believe that at all. There will be a recurrence sooner or later. But the fact that you've gone this long without one indicates that your five-year survival odds may be pretty good. And when a recurrence does come—and it will—you've got a good chance of surviving it."
I didn't hear any more for a while. I just went away in my mind and tried to deal with it—with the possibility of living for another three or four years. I had been living with the expectation of death for so long that having it delayed was like being cheated.
"Mac?" I heard the doctor say.
"Yes?" My voice was hoarse.
"Do you understand what I've been telling you?"
"You're saying . . . I've got more time than I thought."
"Yes, from all our indications."
I shook my head. "I don't . . . I'm not sure how I feel about it."
"I understand." He smiled. "I hope you haven't burned any bridges behind you."
Burned bridges. I had, I thought, left devastated cities in my wake. And then for some reason I remembered the woman pointing the gun at her lover in the sunlight, pointing it, and holding it, and lowering it, and walking away watching me. I thought about that for the longest time, and I wondered when she would point the gun again.
As I drove home, I knew that the reason I was going to live longer was because the others had died. Three of them. An even trade. Three men for three years. I know that's superstitious, foolish, even reactionary. I know that's not how life works. But still, I couldn't help feeling it. You can't help thinking things.
Back at the house, I couldn't stay still. I walked from one room to the next, then went outside, walked around and around the house until it started to rain, then went inside and walked around some more. My mind was racing, but it didn't do me any good. I needed someone to talk to, someone to tell. I wasn't cured, but I'd been given time. And maybe with time, I could make some things right.
Ev got home from school at four o'clock. I was standing in the doorway waiting for her, and she stopped dead and looked at me.
"What is it?" she said. "Is he . . . is it back?"
He. It was a strange slip for her to make. I didn't know who she meant—Runnells, Ned Lawrence, maybe even Jeff Saunderson—but I knew what the it was. I shook my head. "Let's go somewhere, drive someplace where we can walk. Carlie? . . ."
She understood. "She went to Bethany's house after school. Till six."
I nodded and took her hand, and we got into the car.
We drove to a small park near Rock Ford where we used to go right after we were married, before Carlie came along. Hardly anyone went there when the weather was nice, and the light rain had emptied it, if anyone had been there to begin with. Ev didn't ask me anything on the way. I guess she knew I'd tell her everything.
"Can we walk?" I asked her after I'd turned off the ignition. She nodded, and we got out of the car.
The rain was light, a spring drizzle that only dampened our hair, and we walked toward a grove of trees we'd had picnics in years before. I held her hand, and didn't look at her face when I told her. I think I was afraid that I would see the same sense of being cheated that I had felt.
"Fedder says that I'm in good shape. No recurrence." I took a deep breath. "He says my five-year survival chance is good."
I didn't say any more, and she was silent as well. I still couldn't bring myself to look at her. Finally she spoke.
"You're not going to die."
The words themselves were dead, no life in them. It was as if she were only saying them to try to make herself understand, and I thought that she should have said, You're going to live. What she had said, that negative statement, led me to believe, whether I looked at her face or not, that she felt cheated too. And it was my fault, the way I had been, that made her feel that way.
But then her hand tightened on mine, and I felt a shudder pass through her body, and I knew that I was wrong. "Oh, Mac," she said, and stopped, and put her arms around me, burying her face in my chest. "Oh, Mac, everything you did . . . all those things you did because you thought it didn't matter . . . oh, Mac, oh, Jesus . . . oh, thank God I have you for a while . . ."
She was crying, and I realized too that I should have been dead. Dead, not from the cancer, but from one of Ben Arkassian's slugs, from a blast from Michael Eshleman's shotgun, from a careless gesture from the pale, white hand of Carlton Runnells.
I cried with her, cried because I was alive, because I realized now I had always been alive, cried with her because I wanted to make her glad I was alive.
"I love you, Ev," I told her. "And I'm going to fight it next time. When it comes back, I'll fight it. I know how to fight now, and I'll take whatever it throws at me." We walked back to the car with our arms around each other, and that night, after I tucked Carlie in, read her a story, made her laugh, and kissed her good night, Ev and I made love.
I know I have a lot to make up for with her. I've got to get both her and Carlie to forgive me for many things, things Ev doesn't yet realize and Carlie doesn't yet understand. I really don't know if I can, if that wide breach can still be closed.
I do know that I want it to be, and so does Ev. But you don't always get everything you want. All I know is that I'll try to make things better, now that I have time.
I'm not sure, though, if I'll continue as an investigator. As I write this, I don't think I will. Maybe I'll try to get back on a newspaper, maybe I'll work in an office, maybe I'll sell insurance.
Maybe I'll just live for a while. God, I think I'm ready.
Robert McKain was diagnosed as having acute myeloblastic leukemia in April, 1985. He has since undergone two recurrences of the disease, which went into remission after chemotherapy treatments.
He still works as a private investigator in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and in January, 1987, went into partnership with James Teufel, a former member of the Lancaster Police Department.
McKain's Dilemma Page 20