Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “You look terrible,” his son answered.

  Walter shrugged, which seemed to require considerable effort.

  “I’ve been better.”

  Tregear, watching, felt a surge of pity that surprised him.

  “Give it up, Dad,” he said quietly. “You need to be in a hospital.”

  “The cops would kill me before I ever left this room.”

  “Not if you walk out of here with me. What about it, Dad? Will you go to a hospital? Forget about Custer’s Last Stand. Life is worth something.”

  “Not mine.” Walter waved his right hand dismissively, and his face contracted with what looked like nausea. His skin actually seemed gray. “I’m dead either way. I’ve got cancer.”

  Even though Tregear had told himself something of the sort was likely, he discovered he was shocked. That this man, of all men, should die of anything so prosaic was astonishing.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure.” Walter glared at his son with genuine hatred. “My father died of it at about my age. I remember the signs. I don’t want to go out like that.”

  And then he grinned.

  “Take a look at me and see yourself in another twenty years.”

  The threat didn’t register. Tregear’s attention was elsewhere. He could not remember another time when Walter had related any family history.

  “How old were you when your father died?”

  Walter lifted his head. The question appeared to surprise him.

  “Fifteen.” He shook his head and emitted a syllable of laughter. Then he made a face, is if there was a bad taste in his mouth. “He was as mean an old bastard as God ever suffered to breathe. The only things I ever learned from him were the Bible and how to take a whipping. I did better by you.”

  All at once Walter sagged in his chair, overcome by a kind of fainting spell, it seemed. Then he straightened up and brought the back of his right hand, still holding the gun, to his forehead.

  “Any more questions?” he asked, grinning like a devil.

  “Just one. What am I doing here?”

  Dad appeared to find this extraordinarily funny. “Don’t you think families should stay together?” he asked, between bouts of laughter.

  Then he began to cough, but this time he raised his gun and pointed it directly at Tregear’s chest. The coughing went on for at least a minute, and when it was done there were flecks of blood on Walter’s lips and chin.

  And through it all Tregear felt the likelihood that he was about to die and, oddly, he discovered that he was not afraid. The discovery depressed him. This was what it was to be the son of a man like his father, to carry the burden of his hereditary guilt.

  “Where is my mother?” he asked. With the gun still aimed at his heart, the question he knew was a deliberate provocation. It could have ended everything. Perhaps it was even meant to.

  “In heaven, maybe.”

  Walter was still gasping for breath, but he lowered the gun.

  “I mean, where did you dump her body after you murdered her?”

  “Who remembers? It was a long time ago.”

  “Did you at least bury her?”

  “Will you shut the fuck up about your mother?” Walter shouted—or tried. His voice was thick, as if he were strangling. “How old were you then? Seven? It’s ancient history. You probably don’t even remember her.”

  “I remember her. I remember her and I loved her. You probably can’t comprehend such a thing, and that’s a dangerous failure of imagination because it blinds you to other people’s motives.”

  Walter stood up. It was a ponderous, slow, painful thing to watch. The chair might have been his coffin at the moment of the Last Judgment. On his feet, he swayed slightly.

  “I tried,” he said, his eyes cast down. “I tried to live the television dream. I was fond of your mother, I really was. But it just got too hard.”

  It was pure theater. He was a man trapped in his own nature. It was beautifully played. He might even have believed it himself.

  “And so of course you killed her. Had she found out what you were up to, or had you just gotten bored? Don’t forget, I’ve seen how casually you can take life. I saw what you did to my grandparents.”

  “Oh, you mean Betty’s folks?” He smiled his sly smile, as if to say, Okay, so you don’t buy it. No hard feelings.

  He sank backward into the chair, and instantly his face was a grimace of pain.

  “Oh God! This is getting old real fast.”

  There were beads of sweat on his face, and a shudder passed through him, as if he felt a sudden chill. He looked fragile enough to crack like an egg.

  “Go to the hospital, Dad. Don’t put yourself through this.”

  “Death is hard, Steve. That’s just a fact. God never meant us to leave life on a feather bed.”

  “It’s not your time unless you want it to be.”

  “It’s my time—close enough.”

  “You really want to die?”

  Walter only shrugged. The subject seemed to bore him.

  “Okay, Dad. That’s your business. But you’re not taking the whole world with you.”

  For the first time Tregear stepped fully inside the room. He walked over and stood in front of the chair on which Ellen was sitting, blocking her from his father’s sight.

  “Stand up,” he murmured, glancing quickly over his shoulder. “Do exactly what I tell you.”

  Ellen rose behind him, and when she was on her feet she rested the palm of her hand between his shoulder blades. It was a brief gesture, lasting only seconds, but it told him what he needed to know. She would follow his lead.

  Walter stared out at them through sullen, hate-filled eyes.

  “I know what you’ve got in mind,” he said, and a wicked smile twitched at his mouth. “But I’ll probably get off two or three shots before she reaches the doorway. I’ll aim low. I’ll hit her in the legs and I’m bound to stop her. And then I’ll kill her at my perfect convenience.”

  “I don’t think so, Dad.” Tregear shook his head. “Just let me tell you how it works from this point on. At the first sound of a shot the police will storm the house. They’ll break down the doors, they’ll come through the windows if they have to, but they’ll come. At the outside you’ll have maybe ten seconds. And then you’ll die sitting there in that chair.”

  “But I’ll take you with me.”

  Tregear managed a brief laugh. “You’ll probably do that anyway. But the point is, our little conversation will be over.

  “My guess is she’s not worth that to you.”

  Over his shoulder, and in a voice that, were it not so breathless, would have been a shout, he said, “Run! Now!”

  Ellen didn’t hesitate. She ran for the doorway.

  Walter raised his gun, but he didn’t fire. And in an instant she was gone. He slumped back in his chair.

  “That’s twice you’ve scored on me,” he said. “The question is, why is she worth it to you?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and found love.”

  “There’s that. But more than anything there’s the fact that I should have turned you in back in Arkansas. By failing in that, by not taking that risk, I made myself an accomplice to all the monstrous things you’ve done since. You’ve killed all the women you’re going to. I don’t want Ellen to be your last victim.”

  “You’re reserving that honor for yourself?” Walter laughed at his own joke.

  “I’m not eligible. I’ve been your victim most of my life.”

  33

  The ambulance crew who were lifting their patient onto a stretcher knew there was only twenty or so feet separating them from an armed psychopath, so when the kitchen door flew open they almost dropped poor Sam.

  Ellen fell to her knees beside the stretcher and reached out her hand to touch Sam’s face, but in the last instant she hesitated.

  “Is he…?”

  “Yeah, he’s alive,” the medic said
, almost in a whisper as he was prepping him for an IV. “But just barely. We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  Within thirty seconds they were maneuvering the stretcher through the outside door, and Ellen hovered near Sam’s head, touching his face with her fingertips, until, outside on the flagstone walkway, they lowered the wheels and she remembered that she wasn’t going with him.

  She found Sam’s service pistol easily. It was lying in the shadow of the lounge chair, where apparently no one had noticed it. Then, as she sat on the floor, she opened the cylinder. There were five live rounds inside so she closed it, being careful to align the empty chamber with the firing pin.

  Then, as she held the thing in the palm of her hand, all the fear she had been pushing aside flooded in on her and she began to weep.

  She couldn’t help it. She hated herself for it, hated the weakness she was exposing, but she simply could not hold it back.

  At least she wasn’t sobbing. Her tears flowed without a sound.

  Finally she was able to force herself to stop. Then for several seconds she stared down at Sam’s revolver.

  She had no idea where her nine-millimeter automatic might be. It had been years since she had even held a revolver, but at the police academy she had trained with one no different from Sam’s. She knew how to use it.

  And now was the time.

  * * *

  “I never made you a victim,” Walter said finally. He sounded hurt. “You just took off.”

  Tregear nodded, then sat down on the chair lately vacated by Ellen. “That’s right. I just took off. After I found out that you’d lied about what happened to my mother. After I found a dead woman in the back of your van. I figured I was probably next. Does that strike you as an unreasonable conclusion?”

  He folded his arms over his chest, apparently perfectly relaxed. His eyes seemed fixed on the toes of his shoes.

  “Then you killed my grandparents,” he went on, “setting the stage so all I had to do was look in the front window to see them dead. Don’t say you didn’t expect me to go rushing through the door which you had so cunningly booby-trapped.

  “Then I had to run away again. I joined the Navy on the mistaken theory they would ship me out to sea and I’d be safe. I live under a name I took out of a novel. Until Ellie I’ve never allowed myself to get too close to anyone against that inevitable day when we’d cross paths again. And now here we are.”

  Finally, he looked at his father. He smiled, not very nicely. He was done.

  “You’ve been chasing me.” Walter stared at him sullenly. “You’ve hunted me for years. I was the quarry, not you. I’ve known that since you tried to sell me to the cops in Maryland. How many years ago was that? I would have left you alone.”

  “You could have left me alone in Ohio, but you didn’t. Don’t kid me, Dad. You’ve always been a great one for tying up loose ends.

  “And now we’re both done hunting. Within the next half hour or so, you’ll probably be dead. I expect I’ll be making the trip with you. And the circus will go on, probably for years. You’ll be famous, Dad. They’ll write books about you. But at least there won’t be any more Eugenia Lockwoods, or Harriet Murdochs or Sally Wilkes.”

  “I did them all a favor.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Where have you been living?” Walter was so near death that the contemptuous little wave of his hand collapsed almost immediately. “Tell me, Steve, do you believe there is such a place as hell?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there is. But it doesn’t wait for us after death—my old man got that wrong. We’re in it this minute. And it isn’t sin that makes this world hell. That was another of my old man’s mistakes. It just is. It is because God made it so, and He made it so because He hates us. Who was the guy who said that ‘Hell is other people’?”

  “Sartre.”

  “Well, he got that wrong. He got it wrong and my dad got it wrong. Hell is us. We’re each our own hell. And God is right to hate us. So we suffer through every second of living, and suffering is the only way out. Those women are free. And soon I’ll be free.”

  He closed his eyes. For about fifteen seconds Tregear wasn’t sure he hadn’t already crossed over. Then Walter drew a shallow, ragged breath and let it out.

  Slowly, his attention refocused on his son. He smiled.

  “You know, the way I feel and using my right hand, I’m not even sure I’d hit you.”

  “But you’ll try, right?”

  It was virtually a dare. Walter was not going to have the pleasure of seeing him afraid. Live or die, Tregear would deny him that satisfaction.

  Walter looked down at the gun in his hand. He seemed to be measuring its weight.

  “You’re not afraid to die?” he asked.

  “My fear is all used up, Dad.”

  And it was even true. Despair brought with it a kind of serenity. After all these years it was finally ending. The bill had at last come due. Death would almost be a relief.

  The hand came up, and the gun with it. One squeeze of the trigger and the bullet would have gone through Tregear’s throat.

  For about ten seconds his life was measured out to him one breath at a time. He expected to die.

  The shot that killed him would bring the SWAT team that had no doubt arrived by now and Walter would die sitting in that chair. Then, at last the nightmare would be over. Death was a price that seemed worth paying.

  “Still not afraid?”

  “Try me, Dad.”

  In an instant, the point of the gun twitched away. It was aimed at nothing.

  He’s toying with me, Tregear thought to himself. He’ll wait until I really believe I might live, and then he’ll kill me.

  He stood up, taking his time so as not to spook his father into anything. He just preferred to be on his feet. It seemed a more dignified way to die.

  * * *

  The door to the kitchen was still open. With Sam’s pistol held in both hands, Ellen stepped across the threshold.

  There were no more tears, and her heart felt like ice. The only emotion she was conscious of was hatred.

  She had hated very few people in her life—if asked, she probably would have said that she regarded such emotional extravagances as unprofessional—but in the last half hour or so she had learned to hate Walter. He had badly frightened her; he had killed little Rita Blandish. But neither of those was the real reason.

  He was threatening to kill the man she loved. He wanted to rob her of more than her life. She hated him for that.

  For working she preferred rubber-soled Mary Janes with a suede/poly-mesh upper and a Velcro strap. They weren’t very stylish, but they were light and as comfortable as running shoes. They were also as silent as if you were barefoot. They never squeaked as she crossed the linoleum kitchen floor.

  At the entrance to the hallway she heard the muffled drone of conversation. At first she could distinguish only Walter’s voice, but a moment more and she heard Steve. She couldn’t make out the words, but the cadence was as familiar to her as a favorite tune.

  A memory came into her mind, vivid as any immediate event. Once, during the brief few days they had lived together, she had come back to Steve’s apartment, gone up to his office and found him seated in his chair with Gwendolyn perched on his shoulder. Her front paws were in his hair as she looked over his head at the computer screen.

  From almost the first moment Gwendolyn had trusted him, and in such matters animals were wiser than people.

  Steve had come into this house, where he knew a man waited to kill him. He had brought no weapon, no defense except a vast courage, and he had put his own body between Ellen and death. It was the only way he knew. He was simply not meant to be a destroyer.

  In that sense at least, he was not his father’s son.

  As she approached the doorway to Sam’s dining room she could hear their conversation quite distinctly. Walter was gasping for air, as if every word wa
s a hard-won victory over death.

  “You’re afraid to die,” he said. “Maybe not this very moment, but in another hour you’d be glad to be still breathing. Some things you just have to learn the hard way.”

  That was it. There was no more time.

  Her gun held in both hands, she stepped into the doorway. Walter was seated across the room from her, his little automatic pointed at Steve.

  He turned his head in her direction and for an instant his eyes narrowed in surprise.

  She had him cold. She pulled the trigger and his right arm went slack as a bullet hole appeared just below his left eye. He was already dead, but she couldn’t stop herself. Without realizing what she did, she fired twice more and Walter slumped sideways in his chair.

  She waited through the longest five seconds of her life, not letting her gaze wander from his now lifeless face, ready to kill him all over again.

  There was no need.

  She turned her head and for the first time, with something like surprise, saw Steve, not more than six feet away. He just stood there, staring at her as if at an apparition.

  “I had to come back,” she said.

  34

  Sam had been out of the hospital a month, but he hadn’t yet recovered his strength. When he walked his dachshunds he used a cane. Ellen came to visit him every Sunday morning and they took the dogs out together.

  Hard as they tried to avoid it, eventually the conversation always came around to The Case.

  The media frenzy had died down at last. For three weeks it seemed there was no other story on the six o’clock news, but at last the public, and even the reporters, had grown bored with it. Walter’s body was still in a refrigerated vault at the city morgue, but he was already relegated to the uninteresting past. Sometime or other it would all come back, when the books started to come out and if the much-talked-about TV movie ever got made, but for the present it was all just another case file in the computer.

  For Sam and Ellen the story was never over.

  Today’s little tidbit was that the FBI had finally scored a hit on the fingerprints. Forty-two years ago an Indiana teenager named Walter Brewer had been arraigned in juvenile court on the charge of assault with intent to commit rape. Pending a hearing, the boy had been remanded to the custody of his father, Stephen Brewer, a local clergyman of unsavory reputation. Father and son had then promptly disappeared.