“Sure you’re not hit?”
“I’m fine! Elliot, the front door’s the only way out!”
I’d already been there in my mind. “No, the bathroom!” I grabbed her arm, pulling.
“He’ll break through that door even faster than the front! Christ, listen to him! He’s a maniac!”
“He’s reckless! Scared!”
“He’s not the only one!”
“There’s a bathroom window over the tub! C’mon! Head low!”
She came, with my urging, but without the rush of conviction. “That window’s too small, Elliot!”
“We can squeeze through!” But fingers of doubt clutched my heart.
I launched myself down the short hall, dragging Katie after me. There was enough feeble outside light from the open bathroom door to guide us.
But the moment we were inside and I’d dragged back the plastic curtain I could see that Katie was right: we’d never get through that window, not in time, anyway. She might make it, with a lot of squeezing and tearing, but I was too big and there wasn’t enough time to get her through anyway. I knew all this, deep in my heart, but pushed her over the lip and into the tub anyway. “Get up on the sill!”
“Elliot, it’s too goddamn small!”
I stood there next to the tub gazing stupidly at her outline, the barest moist glint of her eyes. The mind does funny things under that kind of stress; speeds up and makes everything else slow down. And it says funny things to you in the process: Way to go, Bledsoe, you finally found someone you can’t live without and now you’re going to have to live without her…
The motel door burst open.
Was halted momentarily by the short length of chain.
Random gun fire spat flame through the crack, the rounds slapping harmlessly above the mangled hulk of the old TV. Reckless and scared and taking no chances.
Katie shivered once violently in my arms.
The small silver wall chain slammed taut under Cormac’s weight, a screw spinning across the front room rug. Cormac!
“The closet!” I whispered desperately, and yanked Katie toward the small door in the hallway.
“That won’t do any good!” she cried.
“It might delays things! Until the cops get—“
But the cops were already here, weren’t they?
The silver chain twanged chung between door and jamb, splinters flying.
I grabbed the door knob of the closet to thrust Katie inside, then locked it. “Shit!”
If only I had a gun. A knife, a lead pipe, anything! If only I had a--
--gun.
I grabbed Katie’s shoulder and pushed her hard back into the bathroom. “Lie down in the tub!”
“Wait—“
--whirled and made a leaping dive back into the living room.
The front door slammed inward with a hollow boom just as my hand closed over Olson’s holster. My fingers scrabbled to unsnapped it.
Outside light poured across me. From the corner of my eyes I saw Cormac silhouetted in the door frame, heard his big .45 bark again. The slug tore up the carpet not six inches from my cheek. I yanked Jimmy’s weapon free and fired too quickly.
A chunk of door frame exploded above Cormac’s head; to my shock he grabbed the door knob before retreating and slammed it shut again. I almost fired again at the blank door but hesitated. He’s coming through the window.
There was a canon roar outside.
I expected the top of my head to disappear. Nothing happened.
Then another canon roar, closer, followed by shouting and running footsteps.
They seemed to be coming from down the sidewalk…to the left, I thought.
I heard Cormac’s revolver bark once more, then the thud of boots running away. “What the hell--?” I whispered to myself.
“Elliot--?” It was Katie, somewhere behind me in the dark.
“Be still for a second!” my ears straining for outside sounds.
Then the door flew open again.
I aimed my gun, didn’t quite squeeze my finger at the smaller silhouette. Then the lights came on and the motel proprietor stood there, one hand frozen on the wall switch, the other lugging a double-barrel shotgun. He was short and bald and sixty and blinking under the sudden light. “What the blue blazes goes on here?”
His eyes dropped to the sprawled deputy on the floor, the widening pool under him. Then his eyes spotted my gun. The twin barrels came up fast.
“No!” Katie shouted behind my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I assured them both, and stuck Jimmy’s pistol under the front of my belt. I knew you didn’t get more than two shots with an old double-barrel and, standing there owl-eyed with the breeze flapping his pajama cuffs, I didn’t think the old man had time or sense enough to reload.
“The man on the floor needs an ambulance!” I told the twin barrels in my best command voice. “Call one now from your desk phone!” Then added: “And tell them ‘officer down, send Medvac unit’ --and be sure to give them the motel’s address!”
The old man blinked at me a moment, glanced once at Katie, then hurried back through the door and down the sidewalk.
I stepped over Olson and headed for the door. “It was Cormac! I saw him!”
“Where are you going?”
“To see if I can pop him off before he gets away! You stay with Jimmy!”
But we both heard the screech of tires in the parking lot.
Katie was at my side in time to see the retreating red lights of the patrol car.
“Stay here!” And I leapt into neon splashed gravel lot.
Thirty second later I looked up from the chassis of my T-bird classic to see Katie clicking down the sidewalk to me, Garbanzo in her arms. “Elliot--?”
I turned from the sagging car with a sour face. “Flat. All four tires. The sonofabitch.”
Katie came up short. “Jesus! That maniac came here to execute us!”
“Of course he did. Jimmy too. Keep his trail clean...”
I kicked the right front flat viciously, “…all the way to the mausoleum!”
Katie was craning around. “Maybe he lit out of town!”
I grunted. “No way. He may not have killed all of us, but he knows now we know where the money’s hidden. He followed Jimmy here. Stood outside the window and heard the whole conversation between the three of us, every detail, maybe even saw the movie! Shit!”
Katie kept looking around desperately. “But we saw him—we’re witnesses--!”
I sighed, leaned against my poor car. “I saw! A silhouette that looked like Cormac. Dean’s funeral is tomorrow--the election the next day. The sheriff has no choice now but to get that money out of the crypt and get it fast, before we do. His prints are on it. Our whole case is on it! --collapses without Dean’s money and Cormac knows it. He’s had twenty years to plan this, practice getting out of tight places.”
“There!”
I looked up: Katie was sprinting away from me across the gravel lot. “Katie--?”
I found her at the door of a ’96 Firebird with flames and pin-stripping adorning the cowling.
“Perfect!” she gasped. “These things go like a mother, pardon my French.” She had something in her hand, a thin strip of metal. And a second later she had the driver’s door open.
“What the hell, are you—Katie, you don’t have a key!“
I stooped, found her sprawled across the front seat, round rump in the air, fingers busy pulling colored wires from under the dash. “I don’t suppose you have a penknife, Elliot? Never mind…”
Another instant and the muscle car’s big engine roared into life.
She slammed the door, took the wheel, lowered the power window. “Get in! I’ll drive!”
“Katie, he has a ten-minute head start on us to the cemetery!”
“I know a short cut!” she winked, and gunned the throaty engine.
As we screamed out of the parking lot I saw the motel owner shaking his shotgun angri
ly at us. “Hey! That’s my car!!!”
* * *
“I doubt you know any short cut someone who’s lived here all his life doesn’t already know.”
She was on her cell talking to Banes at the New Orleans’ Police Department, giving him the address and what facts we knew, glad to hear the motel proprietor had already phoned an ambulance and they were on their way with medics.
She rang off and hesitated behind the wheel before replacing the phone in her bag.
“He’ll try again to kill us when we get there.”
“Yep.”
“And he’s probably got a regulation shotgun in that squad car and God knows what other kind of arsenal. And all we’ve got is Jimmy’s service revolver with five rounds left.”
“Yep.” Katie kept the pedal floored, screaming around wooded corners. “So. You got a plan?”
I tossed up my hands. “Try to get there and out again before he does, is all I can think.”
She nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“—and maybe get blown apart if he’s hiding there waiting for us.”
“I don’t think Cormac’s in a waiting mood tonight, I think he’s angry and desperate and concerned with getting ahold of that money and little else. It’s his last chance.”
“Unless he already has it,” I said. “picked it up before his little visit with us tonight.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Because before he overheard us talking, learned from Jimmy about Angel’s moving up the funeral to tomorrow, the crypt was still the safest place on earth to hide that dough. It’s worked pretty well up to now.”
“What if he’d already found out, already got the money before he stopped off at the motel?”
“I doubt it. Jimmy said he’d just gotten the call from Angel. She wouldn’t have called them both and Jimmy wouldn’t have told Cormac before telling us.”
“Well, we’ll know in a few minutes if we see Cormac’s patrol car parked in front of the mausoleum. Unless he tries to hide it among the trees, the way we did.”
She shook her head. “No, that would waste time, and time’s the last thing he can afford to waste. Remember, he has no key. There’s only one way into that crypt and it’s through the trapdoor on the roof. Once we can get up there on top, if we see the rope ladder hasn’t been lowered, we’ll know he’s not inside the crypt.”
I made an uncertain sound.
“What--?”
“We’re sitting here in a stolen car trying to out-jump a very smart cop.”
“We’re smart too. And Cormac’s sitting in his car right now trying to out-jump us” She poked my ribs. “And two heads are better than one, partner!”
She reached down to stroke the tawny head lounging between us. “Three heads, really.”
* * *
There was no patrol car at the cemetery.
No visible one at least, and none discernible near the Robichou mausoleum.
Katie drove around the immediate area twice to be sure until I persuaded her she was costing us precious time.
We hid the Firebird as best we could under a large copse of trees…but then we also knew that’s just where someone suspicious would be looking for a car.
“I’m doing this alone,” I told her, fingers on the inside door handle, “no arguments.”
“Not going to give you any. Last thing I ever want again in my lifetime is to see the inside of that stone death house.”
I pecked her cheek. “Signal with the horn if you see Cormac coming. In fact, signal if you see any headlights coming.”
“You know I will.”
I slid out of the car, shut the door softly, touched the grip of Jimmy’s gun for reassurance and, ducking low, loped from cemetery trees to mausoleum mouth.
The big mahogany door had been reinstalled and refitted. It was shut tight. Even tighter than before. And who, I wondered, hired the work done? Angel, no doubt, anticipating Dean’s funeral tomorrow.
I used the combination of drain spout and trellis to gain the roof.
Took a moment to scan the area from this higher vantage point. No sign of a police car, or any other vehicles. Or of anyone skulking about.
I tread nimbly to the trapdoor, bent, found it firmly in place, the rope ladder coiled beside it. I breathed relief; either we’d beaten Cormac to the scene or he’d already come and left, and I had a gut feeling he hadn’t.
“Hey—“
“Shit!” I whirled, ripping the police pistol free of my belt, found a wide-eyed Katie behind me, palms raised in surrender. “Take it easy, it’s me!”
“What the hell are you—“
“It suddenly occurred to me I’d be more effective as a lookout up here on the roof—wider viewing area, y’know?”
I tried to calm my slamming heart. “Using what to signal me with, bird calls?”
“I’ll rap on the roof!”
I looked at her. “You’ll rap on the roof.”
“Or stomp or something!”
There wasn’t time to argue. I pried the trapdoor up, set it gently back, took out my flashlight and cast the beam into the black cavity of the crypt. I sat listening a moment for inner sounds till reassured, then dropped the rope ladder through the hole.
“I really wish you’d go back to the car with Garbanzo,” I urged.
“You know, two people could find the money faster than one, Elliot!”
“Oh, that’s a great idea, Katie! Then once were both inside, searching around, Cormac can haul up the ladder and nail the trapdoor shut! Perfect!”
“Yeah, but—“
“Katie?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
She settled her bottom on the roof as I lowered myself through the hole into a darker darkness. I looked up at her one more time before my head disappeared. “Rap really loud, huh? Shout if you have to.”
She nodded rapidly, scanning the outside area.
Flashlight between my teeth, I descended into what some part of my mind kept insisting, with great irony, was my final resting place.
It was a chilly night, twice as chilly in the belly of the crypt. I began to wish for a heavier jacket.
The first thing that struck me as I worked my way downward hand-over-hand was the powerful odor emanating from the mausoleum’s interior. A rich fragrance just short of cloying: violets.
I stepped down on the stone floor, let go of the swinging ladder.
I immediately cast the flashlight beam in the direction of Amy’s vault.
I found it--closed flush and tight again—and in the vase below her name plate was a large bouquet of freshly picked violets.
He mother, no doubt. Angel must have paid an earlier visit—she did have the only key—placed the flowers, maybe felt a renewed depth for her loss—her losses—and decided then and there to move Dean’s burial date up. Poor Angel.
I stood there a moment and played my light over little Amy’s nameplate. wondering what Mrs. Robichou would do now with her life. What would I do in her place? Try to start over somewhere fresh, someplace with no bad memories? But some memories never leave us, and Manchac had been Angel’s home all her life despite her losses.
Staring down at the little vault door I thought I felt some of Angel’s own sadness creep into my bones…felt suddenly out of place and uncomfortable here, a trespasser. I had no right in this personal, sacred place, even less right to break into it. Amy’s memory had been abused enough.
I swung the flashlight beam around in a slow circle about me.
Three large, wide walls.
Lined with tiers of vaults.
I had a sudden vision of Cormac standing there the other day when Katie and I broke in on him. Standing there with an armful of money and memories, twenty long years of them, and now the day had finally arrived to claim what has been so long in coming. And then he hears someone at the only existing door. He feels himself flood with an
ger and fear. He looks to the rope ladder, realizes he can’t climb without both hands, can’t take with him what he’s waited and dreamed of forever…will have to put it back, postpone it yet again. Maybe he could stuff some in his pockets, his cuffs—but he didn’t come here that day, wait all these years, to end up with only part of it. It was all or nothing. At least for a little while longer.
But where does he stash it? There are noises at the door, he must be quick!
He spins out, mind racing. Where?
Not back in Amy’s vault--there isn’t time to work that false bottom again!
And everything else around him is just stone walls, stone floors, steel vaults!
The flashlight twitched impatiently in my hand.
What would I do if I were Cormac?
Only one thing. It has to be one of the vaults.
An old family member, it doesn’t matter which, it just has to be quick!
But finding that family member vault now--that could take hours…
I didn’t think this through.
And suddenly I knew Cormac had won.
Unless he’d gotten impossibly delayed—a traffic accident or something—he’d be here any instant. While I raced around frantically dragging open coffin after corpse-filled coffin, only to find I’d begun at the wrong wall…
As I stood there in the dark and chill, spinning in slow, confused circles with the cone of light, I felt like a man treading water in shark infested waters, waiting for that first bite…
I flipped a coin in my head and started across the floor toward the far wall.
Abruptly my right shoe came down on a raised spot on the smooth stone floor. I hesitated…
…a small bump on an even surface that contained no bumps.
A fat roach?
I turned, played the light around my feet, stepped back and saw a dull gleam.
I bent, reached out, and there was Amy’s heart-shaped locket lying on the cool stone, the gold chain coiled neatly beside it.
A thrill went through my vitals.
I picked up the locket, straightened…played the shaking cone of light around me slowly…
“Amy--?”
I heard a soft whimper somewhere, whirled the light.
FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 37