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She streaked out from the passage beneath the stairway and raced over to the left hall of exhibits where she had left her brother. She burst in on Robert the Doll. In silence, he was jerking back and forth on his stand.
She nearly tripped over a body. She hunched down. It was Sam Barnard. He was wearing handcuffs, and when she gingerly touched him, she discovered a plastic bag wound tightly around his head. With trembling fingers, she ripped it away from him.
“Katie!”
The whisper was Bartholomew’s. His hands were on her shoulders. He motioned her to silence, but beckoned her to follow him.
Her brother was stretched out in the facsimile of the cemetery, where the servicemen from the Maine were buried and honored. A bag was on his head; it wasn’t tightened. She ripped it away from him, and lay against him, desperate to hear his breathing.
He had a pulse. There was a gash on his head; she knew from the stickiness beneath her fingers when she touched him.
“Oh, God!” she prayed in a breath.
“Katie!” Bartholomew warned her again.
“You…you…you…you…you…are dead!” The words were followed by laughter. She tried to rise carefully, to start to move.
“Katie, the other way!” Bartholomew urged her.
Too late. She ducked to avoid a nineteen-twenties flapper, and crashed right into the wall of a big man’s chest.
He reached for her. He was wearing gloves. The gloves he had always known to wear. Diver’s gloves, so plentiful in the Keys!
His hands wound around her neck. She struggled.
He winced and jerked suddenly, as if he’d been hit from behind.
Katie took the moment. She pushed against him and bit his arm, bit as hard as she could. She clawed at his flesh.
If she died, which well she might, the bastard wasn’t getting away with it again.
Nor would he blame David Beckett.
“Bitch!” he roared.
His huge hand came flying across her cheek. The blow was stunning; she felt it with her jaw and head, stars sprung up before her eyes.
And then a darkness deeper than any she had ever imagined.
David slowed when he reached the lawn of the museum. Any alarm now would cost Katie her life, and he knew it. He had to believe that he had a chance. That the killer was determined to tease and taunt her before ending it. He wondered if she was meant to be his finest work. Katie O’Hara, so well-known and beloved in Key West. Beautiful, and a songstress. With a family as old and renowned as his own.
And Sean was in there, somewhere.
The door hadn’t been locked. It remained open. He couldn’t be sure how the killer would act and react, and he was certain that Liam would turn the house upside down. But he had to hurry-if sirens suddenly riddled the streets, if he knew that time was nearly up, the killer would work faster.
The killer had made a mistake. He wouldn’t be able to cast suspicion on David or anyone else. But David thought that he was so overconfident now in his quest for some kind of belated family vengeance that he wouldn’t believe that. He would still believe himself invincible.
And he would have taken care.
David didn’t enter right away. He stared at the floor behind the doorway. It took him a moment, and then he saw it. A trip wire. Somehow it would alert the killer that he was here.
His eyes had attuned well to darkness. He paused for just a moment at the entry, then leapt the turnstile as silently as he could. He hurried toward the left hall.
There was a body on the floor. Heart in his throat, he hurried to it.
Sam Barnard. David checked for a pulse. The man was breathing.
“Ch-cha-cha-Charleston!” A flapper warbled out in a gritty voice.
David jerked around. There was movement. He hadn’t intended to ever have these robotics work; he’d have brought in some experts and gotten them off to good homes elsewhere.
But tonight, they had a life of their own.
They’d been activated to hide other noises in the museum. They had been turned on to scare and frighten, and distract.
He wouldn’t be distracted. But he had to be very careful. He knew where the killer was. And he knew that the killer would be waiting for him.
Hurriedly, he searched the room, but he could only find Sam Barnard. He silently swore to the unconscious man that he would arrange for an ambulance the second he could. Once he had found Sean. And Katie. Katie…
Alive. She had to be alive!
He thanked God that he was good in darkness, and silence. He started through the museum. The killer would be waiting. He prayed that there was a way to surprise him.
Katie felt a stunning pain in her head. She blinked, and the world was still a realm of murky darkness-with odd, milky shapes blurring her vision.
She tried to move, and she could not. She tried to twist around, and she realized that she was strapped to a table.
She was covered in…
White. White. A white wedding dress.
She was wearing a wedding dress and veil, and she was strapped down on the slab that was a bed in the Elena de Hoyos exhibit in the museum.
Terror streaked through her, filling her with horror and panic. She almost squirmed; she would have screamed in hysteria if it hadn’t been for the gag in her mouth and the tape over it.
“Katie, Katie O’Hara!”
She was more horrified as she heard the crooning voice. For a moment, things seemed to jiggle above her, and then come into focus.
Pete. Lieutenant Peter Dryer. Of course. They’d been so stupid.
Who knew the families? Who could get keys to houses and museums? Who could be at any crime scene, and be expected?
Who had been the great-great-great-grandson of a man named Smith, Smith who had left behind a daughter who had married an immigrant named Dryer?
“Oh, Katie, I’ve saved the best for you. There’s a trip cord there, by the door. When David Beckett comes to save you, he’ll pull the wire. So cleverly planned. See-well, you can’t really see, so I’ll explain. I have your brother all trussed up and dressed like Carl Tanzler. All right, all right, so you saved your brother once! But I’m very good, and I can change my plans, and I really like this. I like this so much. Tanzler! Ha-ha. Sure, sure, Sean is young and much, much better looking, but… He’s got himself a syringe full of embalming fluid and other toxins, and if I’ve got this right, he’ll plunge them right into your heart when David enters. Then, of course, I’ll shoot the bastard for what he’s done to you. At first, I thought about letting him squirm in prison, but there are so many appeals, and hell, this is Key West, and the State of Florida considers us their wacky tailpiece to begin with. He might not get the death penalty. So! Old Key West justice. He dies here on the spot. ”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
He fixed that for her, ripping off the gauze, jerking out the gag. It was horrible. She thought that she would choke.
She opened her mouth to scream, “David! It’s a trap!”
“Ah, loverboy isn’t here yet,” Pete said. “You can scream for a moment. Oh, yes, and it’s so good, so damned good! See what I did for your brother? He is a fine, strapping lad! Had that Sam Barnard down for me, and in a lock. Held him while I handcuffed him. And didn’t blink until I crushed his skull with the butt of my gun! There you go. Even the big and powerful fall to knowledge and careful planning. Remember that. Ah, well, you won’t really need to remember it long. ”
“You’re a cop!” she told him.
“A good one. But you have to understand, Katie. I thought that maybe you did. My ancestor cursed the Becketts. He was hanged-because of a Beckett. ”
“He was guilty!”
Pete shook his head. “Katie! You don’t understand. Some vile pirate had already been hanged, and there was no reason that my ancestor should have died. ”
&nb
sp; “He killed people. ”
“He had a right! We were meant for great things. Don’t you understand anything? I had to get revenge on the Becketts for my family. For honor! I am the curse!”
“No! You’re a cop!”
“Yes, yes, and such a good one. Katie, time has gone by-time has waited. For me! Don’t go thinking I’m crazy, young lady. I have been on a mission. And David Beckett will finally pay the piper for his vile family. He should have been arrested and sent to the electric chair for Tanya-now that didn’t really hurt much. She was a little tramp. I was only a patrolman at the time, but she was so tipsy. And it was so easy. She was walking on one of the side streets, pacing. I stopped to give her a ride. She got right in the car, and I said I’d take her to the museum, to see David. She looked out the window, and I was ready. I didn’t even really know what I was doing then, but it was easy. I’d been prepared for the right moment, so I slipped that clean plastic over her head, and she had so much alcohol in her system…well, she went easy. Laid her out in back of the car…used the key to the museum I’d copied at least two or three months earlier, just waiting on ol’ David to get back, Mr. Hero Serviceman! Then, after midnight, I had lots of time to set her up. Now, that Stella, she was just at the right place at the right time, and I was at the right place at the right time, and good ol’David was back in the city, thinking he could tear the case apart. ”
“Why did you let him?” Katie asked.
“Because I’m so damned good. With Stella, the city was rising. I just walked right up behind her while she was peeking through the bushes-afraid of the cops! Killed her-and left her there for hours. Who knows? Maybe folks even saw her and thought she was a drunk, sleeping it off. I went back for her, and hell, yes, missy, I had a copy of the key to that place, too-that shoddy new museum where I left Stella. Of course, I took the tapes from the surveillance cameras. ” He paused to chuckle. “I even called David Beckett to come see the crime scene. ”
“Danny,” Katie whispered. At least he was talking, at least she was playing for time.
“Danny, well, that saddened me,” Pete said regretfully. “I thought I could bribe him to just stop playing around. He got interested in old curses and figured out that I was descended from Eli Smith. He thought that it was funny that the police lieutenant’s ancestor was hanged for murder-funny! I tried to bribe him anonymously-couldn’t work up enough anger to kill the guy and thought that a little money might satisfy him. It would have worked, too-Danny was never exactly what you’d call ambitious! But then he saw me with Stella and I knew that he would start to put the pieces together. Danny wasn’t ambitious, but he wasn’t stupid. ”
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