And there it was. On the top line was written “From the Attic.” The first entry was at 1:04 Monday, and concerned Joey Henson playing in his sandbox. At 1:05 something called Mephistopheles (creatively misspelled) had crossed the backyard.
And at 1:12 things had started to happen on the Stanleys’ back porch.
CHAPTER 35
Kathryn read with a thudding heart, and then reached for the telephone book. Tom would go to George’s before he went to Patricia’s, but he might stop at the station before he did either. She found the number and punched it into the phone.
“Hello, is Chief Holder there? Has he already gone to the Kimbroughs’ with a search warrant?” The officer could not take it upon himself to say where Chief Holder was, but if the caller would like to leave a message? Kathryn hung up on him and grabbed for the phone book again.
This time the voice that answered was more familiar.
“May I speak to Chief Holder, please?”
“You have the wrong number,” said George Kimbrough testily.
“Mr. Kimbrough? Don’t hang up, I’m looking for the Chief of Police, this is his office calling.” She could hear her heart beating.
“Well, I don’t know why you think he’s here, because he’s not.”
“Oh—I see.” She took a careful breath. “I understood he was going to make a routine inquiry concerning—ah, concerning the homicide,” she extemporized, “and I somehow got the impression he was going to see you, but obviously he wasn’t. Sorry to have bothered you.” She put down the receiver with an emphatic “Damn!” She paged hurriedly through the phone book once more, picked up the receiver again, and punched out another number.
“Why ‘damn’?” asked Mrs. Warburton from the doorway.
“Oh, I may have spooked him,” Kathryn said fretfully. “That was probably a dumb thing to do— Hello, Patricia? Kathryn Koerney. Are the police there yet?”
“You mean they’re coming?”
“Yes, but don’t worry about it. It’s George they’re after, but they don’t know it yet. I have to go, bye.” She hung up without ceremony and called the police station again. “This is Kathryn Koerney, and I have an urgent message to get through to Tom Holder, who is in Trenton, trying to get a search warrant, can you tell me whose office I’m likely to find him in?”
The officer was unable to tell her that, but if she would like to leave a message?
“No, you don’t understand, this is urgent, he’s trying to get a search warrant,” Kathryn babbled frantically, “and I can save him the trouble, I’ve got information here he can make an arrest on—”
The officer began to address her in the elaborately patient voice he obviously reserved for cranks, and repeated his willingness to take a message.
Kathryn slammed the phone down and said, loudly, a word her housekeeper had never heard her use before.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Warburton, “you’re shaking. Sit down.”
“How can I sit down?” Kathryn wailed. “I’ve got to—I’ve got to”—she shook her hands in frustration—“do something!”
“Well, then,” said Mrs. Warburton calmly, “do something.”
Kathryn stopped shaking and stared at her. She took a slow, deep breath and made herself let it out smoothly. She picked up Tita’s notebook, still open to the crucial page, and held it up in front of Mrs. Warburton. “All right, then. You take this thing to the police station, and by hook or by crook, come hell or high water, you see to it that the instant Tom Holder steps into that building, you give him this, give it to him yourself, personally, and tell him I said to read this page.”
“Read this page.”
“That’s right. The minute he gets there, understand? Insist on it. Walk over people.” She thrust the notebook into Mrs. Warburton’s hands and headed for the front door. With her hand on the knob she stopped, considered a moment, turned, and ran upstairs. Two and a half minutes later she ran out of the house into a light drizzle, got into her car, and again made record time on the distance between Alexander Street and Canterbury Park.
Two blocks from the Kimbroughs’ house, a silver-gray Mercedes coming toward her made a left turn, and as the car crossed her path, Kathryn recognized George at the wheel. She turned right and followed him. At the edge of Canterbury Park he stopped at a red light. Kathryn quickly pulled her car over, parked it at the curb, and jumped out. She ran to the passenger door of George’s car and opened it.
“George!” she cried with a big smile. “Just the person I wanted to—”
George had jumped when the door was opened, and gaped at the intruder in wide-eyed panic. He stomped on his accelerator and roared through the intersection, laying rubber on the damp asphalt like a teenage hot-rodder.
Kathryn, who had freed her hand from the door handle barely in time to avert the loss of fingers, stared after him, openmouthed. As he vanished around a corner, she shook herself out of her astonishment, dashed back to her car, and gave chase, thanking God fervently for expensive tires and good traction. The rain continued, faint but persistent.
There was no way George could know of her connection with the police. To him, she could be only a Kimbrough customer—a customer, moreover, whose favor he had always assiduously courted. But he had not hesitated an instant to leave her, without a word, in a cloud of exhaust. It was more than colossally rude, it was dangerous. She could have had half her hand wrenched off. She turned the corner and saw the Mercedes far ahead of her, speeding down the wet street.
Why such guilty terror? Why had he fled so precipitously from a mere acquaintance? An appalling revelation came to Kathryn: George had Tita Robinson’s body in the car; he was on his way to dispose of it. Nothing else would explain such desperate determination not to be joined or delayed by anyone whatsoever. With her heart in her throat, she ran a red light, took a slippery thirty-mile-an-hour curve at forty-seven, and prayed for a passing police car.
Canterbury Park was close to the edge of town; within minutes they were out of the suburbs into a semirural area, where homes were placed two or three to a mile, far back from the road, in groves of pines. Kathryn, an inveterate explorer of country roads, realized thankfully that she was familiar with this one.
There was hardly any traffic. Kathryn nudged her windshield wipers up to a faster rhythm, pushed her accelerator a tenth of an inch closer to the floor, took another curve at heart-stopping speed, and began softly to curse George Kimbrough through her gritted teeth. The curses were a prayer as surely as the appeal for a police car had been.
It was not her job to chase criminals, and what she was doing was dangerous—not only to her, which didn’t matter, but to anyone who got in her way. But if she gave up the chase, George would slow down; he could proceed at a decorous pace, unremarkable and unhindered, off into the soggy gray countryside, until he found a suitably secluded spot.
Her knuckles were white and her grip on the steering wheel would have crushed anything less sturdy. There was a cell phone in her handbag. She thought fleetingly of calling for assistance, but dismissed the idea even as it occurred. At that speed it would have been lunacy to try to make a call on dry streets; on the rain-soaked roads she was traveling it would have been criminal. And probably fatal.
Besides, she would get help only if she got through to Tom Holder. If he wasn’t at the station, all she would get was a replay of her previous frustration: That idiot would offer to take a message. By the time she talked to Tom, George would be long gone. He could hide poor Tita’s body, return home, and play innocent when the cops came around. Kathryn didn’t think the evidence in Tita’s notebook would be sufficient to convict him if no other evidence turned up.
From one of the long driveways ahead, out from under the dripping trees, came a child crossing the road. Kathryn stood on her brake pedal and jerked her wheel to the left. The car, sliding over the wet pavement, went into a skid she could not control. Eternal seconds later she came to a halt, skewed sideways across the road. She
looked around. The child had retreated to his driveway and was yelling angrily at her. Unheard through her shut windows, she exploded at him, “What the hell are you doing out in this weather?” forgetting that she herself had spent unnumbered childhood hours walking in the rain. She drew her breath on a sob, pulled the car around, and took off down the road again.
Her heart was pounding so hard, she could feel her pulse in her fingertips, and at this point only one consideration kept her going: She knew it was no coincidence that George had gone on his gruesome errand this morning. God only knew why he hadn’t gotten rid of Tita before now, but he was doing it now rather than later because of Kathryn’s phone call. She had, in effect, warned him that the police were on their way to his house. If he got away with this murder, it would be entirely her fault.
Still, the incident with the child had seriously frightened her, and as she sped down the road she prayed furiously: Do something, dammit, because in about three minutes I am giving this up before I run over somebody. Kathryn had learned in seminary that God was the best and safest target for one’s anger—after all, his feelings can’t be hurt—but she had also been taught that it was bad theology to give God an ultimatum. At that point, however, she was more in touch with her feelings than with her theology.
In the next moment she took note of a couple of things she did not immediately recognize as an answer to her prayer. First, George was still in sight, which, given her brief delay, he shouldn’t have been. Second, the reason he was still in sight was that he had lost precious seconds deciding, at a sudden fork in the road, which way to take. He had opted for the narrow lane that went off to the left. Just before she got to the fork, Kathryn realized that God had delivered George into her hands. She went to the right.
A half a mile farther on, there was a small road on the left that met the main road at a right angle. Kathryn pulled across it, her Audi blocking its entire width. George could still get around her on the shoulder, but he would have to do it slowly. That he would come to this intersection she was certain; on the road he had taken he could do nothing else. He would wind around for about a mile first, but if he was still traveling fast, he should arrive in less than a minute. Kathryn rolled down her window and switched off the ignition. She looked around her, praying now for privacy; for the next few minutes she wanted neither police nor passersby. The nearest house was a quarter of a mile away; with any luck its inhabitants were all inside watching television.
Kathryn opened the handbag that sat on the passenger seat and pulled out the item she had hastily fetched from her bedroom before she had dashed off to confront George. It was her uncle Jesse’s gun.
It was an old friend, that gun, but now it seemed cold to her touch, and threatening. In the stillness she was aware of her heartbeat again.
It was against the law to carry firearms in the state of New Jersey. A conviction carried a mandatory prison sentence of one year. Yet Kathryn, in the grip of an urgency that was pointless if Tita Robinson was dead, and setting out in haste to challenge a murderer in his den, had been afraid to go without it. George had killed twice. She could have attempted to ensure her safety by telling him the police were on their way, but what if he hadn’t believed her? It would be stupid for him to harm her, under the circumstances, but that was just the trouble: George was stupid. So she had brought the gun. And now she was going to use it.
The seconds dragged by. The steady drizzle whispered in the woods. Had he stopped? Turned back? Surely not. He could not know, on that winding road, that his pursuer was no longer behind him. “Come on, damn you,” she muttered. She thought about what George was carrying in his car, and was filled with cold fury. As she watched that place in the trees where the narrow road disappeared, and willed it to disgorge her prey, she felt an antipathy like an incubating demon growing inside her. She realized suddenly that she could kill him here and simply drive away. Throw the gun away somewhere. A disused canal crept through the woods a few miles down the road. There was a place where you could drive to the water’s edge and still stay mostly hidden in the trees. She wouldn’t even have to get out of the car. Lean out the window, toss the gun into the canal, drive back to Harton. Justice would be served. George would be dead. No one would ever know.
The frost-colored Mercedes squealed around the bend.
Kathryn lifted the gun and took aim. Closer, closer. Through the windshield of the approaching car she saw George’s face over the steering wheel. He was coming almost straight at her, and he had begun to slow down. An easy shot. She fired.
CHAPTER 36
The Mercedes skidded wildly, out of control. It came to rest in the muddy ditch at the side of the road, and George tumbled out of it to stare incredulously at his left front tire. It was not so much flat as destroyed. He looked up at the car that blocked his way, and saw Kathryn Koerney get out of it. She was wearing her clericals and the Burberry he had remarked upon five days ago, and she was carrying a gun.
“What in hell—” he thundered, starting toward her, but she lifted the gun, and he stopped.
“I’ll tell you what in hell,” she said savagely. “What in hell have you done with that child? Where is she?”
George turned the color of dirty snow and staggered backward a couple of paces. He bumped into the front of his car and leaned against it. The mist, now growing fainter, settled on wan cheeks already damp with sweat.
“Where is she?” Kathryn repeated, raising the gun to aim at his face.
George cringed and flung up a hand. “In . . . the trunk,” he gasped.
Kathryn’s gorge rose, and for a few moments she fought desperately to keep from being sick.
George, alarmed by the look on her face, and cowed by the weapon, attempted to placate her. “Shall I—” He gestured toward the trunk.
“No!” Kathryn fairly shouted. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was look in that trunk. She stood still for a minute, struggling for control. The drizzle unobtrusively stopped, but she didn’t notice. All she knew was that she needed to sit down. “Get in my car,” she ordered. “Backseat.”
He walked unsteadily over to the Audi and got in. She went around to the passenger side, got in the front seat, and sat sideways so she could watch him. Making sure her captive could still see the gun through the space between the seat backs, and thanking God that George seemed not to have a clue how frightened she was, she dug into her handbag again and produced the cell phone.
Miraculously, she remembered the number of the Harton Police Station. Praying that she wouldn’t get the idiot again, she got another miracle: Someone intelligent answered. Kathryn introduced herself as the woman who had brought Grace Kimbrough back from California, and then for good measure threw in that she was a personal friend of Tom Holder. With a clarity of thought and speech of which she would not have dreamt herself capable given her emotional state, she related the salient details of her situation, described with precision where she could be found, and concluded, “I’m holding him here, but I don’t know how much longer I can continue to hold him, so I’d be deeply grateful if you’d send someone to take him off my hands.”
The intelligent voice became curious. “How are you holding him?”
Kathryn wasn’t about to tell the cops about her gun if she could help it. After a second’s hesitation she replied evenly, “Sheer force of personality.”
This riposte earned her a chuckle and a promise that Chief Holder would be notified and a patrol car dispatched without delay.
Kathryn turned her attention back to George. There was time to pass; might as well ask questions. “How did you find out that Tita had seen you on the Stanleys’ back porch that day?”
But George had thought of something. “That’s against the law,” he said officiously, nodding at the gun. “You can get into trouble with that.”
“Not as much trouble as you’re going to get into.”
“They’ll send you to jail.”
“I’ll get out before you wi
ll.”
George licked his lips again. “Listen, you can’t be serious. You don’t want to go to jail. Put that thing away and let me go, or I’ll tell the police about it.”
“Oh, I expect you to,” Kathryn replied with a cool she was far from feeling. “But when they pull up, I’ll put it back in my handbag and they won’t see it. If you say anything about it, I’ll laugh and say, ‘Get him.’ Do you think they’ll search me on your word? Notice the collar, George.”
George had no answer to this, and she asked him again how he had discovered that Tita had seen him on the Stanleys’ porch.
“Who’s Tita?”
Kathryn swore at him. “That little girl, you—” She couldn’t think of a noun bad enough, so she let it go.
George shrank before her fury. “I didn’t—I didn’t ever plan to kill her,” he whined. “I didn’t want to hurt her. I just—just panicked. I had to get her safe, I mean, keep her quiet.”
Kathryn had never hated anyone the way she hated this man, but for the second time that weekend, she spoke the classic counselor’s line: “Do you want to talk about it?”
He was only too ready to do so. “I had gone over there to get some stuff for Bill, his lawyer had asked me to. Shirts and things. I was at the back door, and I heard this voice say hello, and there was this kid looking over the fence. She called me by name, but I didn’t know who she was, I don’t know the neighborhood kids. Anyway, she started to talk about how she’d gotten Bill arrested because of what she’d seen. And I encouraged her, you know, because I wanted to know what had happened, it’s been driving me nuts, not knowing what was going on.”
“That I can well imagine,” said Kathryn. “You leave a perfectly good corpse lying around and some fool goes and hides it. Enough to make you give up murder, I should think.” She found that the sarcasm was a useful vent for her feelings. If she kept it up, maybe she could keep from crying.
Crooked Heart Page 21