Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  But while she heard those future voices, Billie crept toward the shadow people and finally made out the rocky edge of the land.

  She saw only two of them at first. Harley carried Wesley into the shallows, along the gate. Billie saw the torn and twisted spots in the fencing—the marks of other would-be intruders. It was too easy, too much a setup to wedge their bodies in the preexisting holes. As if he’d found a custom-designed murder site. And it would be totally believable that the storm-encouraged tides had driven them there, wedged and trapped them.

  Wesley’s head dropped onto Harley’s shoulder. He looked like an overgrown child being taken up to bed.

  He’d drugged them. They’d have properly water-filled lungs when found. The rain was a lucky break for him, gave an unexpected sharp edge to their supposed prank, made it more believable that only tragedy could be its result.

  She stood above them, watching Harley’s careful slow steps. He had the boy in both hands, which meant he was unarmed, for the moment. They were as equal combatants as they ever would be. She squatted and searched the ground until she found a fist-sized stone. And then another.

  “Stop!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Stop that right now!”

  It took awhile for her bellow to register in the surrounding din, but Harley looked up at her with no sign of comprehension. “Everybody knows!” she screamed. “The police know. There’s no point—put him down!”

  She saw Penny now, below her, sitting propped against the low rise. Her hands looked bound and she stared at Billie with a drugged, dull-eyed lack of interest. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” Harley said, and even through the rain, his voice was rich and convincing.

  “Put him down!” she screamed again. And if he did? Then what? Then Harley could use his hands. She’d be worse off.

  Then…then she’d have another idea. Their car, maybe. Tie Harley up. Leave him. “Put him down!” she screamed again, and to her amazement, he did.

  And started toward her, reaching into his pocket. She saw it then, the glint of metal in his hand. He had a knife.

  She had a rock. She raised her arm and aimed. He was a perfect target, directly below her and so resolutely enraged he barely reacted to her arm in motion. Barely reacted at all until the rock hit his mid-section, the knife flew out of his hand, and he fell with a shout.

  She scrabbled down the short hill, sliding and tripping, toward the children. But his hand grabbed her ankle, pulled her sideways, down.…

  Not a big-enough, hard-enough rock. Not enough.

  “You’re dead,” he snarled. He held on to her while he twisted. Looking for the knife, but it wasn’t near enough, and it was too hard seeing anything clearly and he was too winded to be completely mobile and dangerous. Yet.

  She had a minute and another rock. All he had was her ankle.

  She kicked at his hand with her other foot, kicked as hard as she could, hoped to hear breaking bones, but settled for a momentary loosening of his fingers. And she scrabbled to her feet, digging into her raincoat pocket at the same time until she stood, looming above him as he tried without success to get his footing again.

  This one to the head. No squeamishness. Not thrown. Pounded. This was the end of the line. Whoever she’d once been, she wasn’t anymore. She was going to kill.

  She raised the arm.

  And felt it pulled down from behind as a voice said, “Don’t move. I have a gun aimed at your head.”

  Harley Marshall, who’d been halfway to sitting again, looked up and over, then silently lay down flat on his back. Obedient man.

  “Your radio show stinks, too,” Emma said. “This is a pretty extreme way to get you off the air, but whatever works.”

  Billie hadn’t heard the car, hadn’t heard her. “Emma,” she whispered. “Emma, I thought—”

  “Why don’t you untie the kids?” Emma asked her. Then she spoke into her phone. “The side next to the quarry. Down by the water,” she told someone.

  “What happened to everybody, where were the—”

  “Bad accident on North San Pedro. Fatality and injuries. They had to stop, call for help. I came as soon as I could.”

  “God, I can’t thank you enough, I was so—”

  “The kids, Billie.”

  Billie felt the flash of resentment, and then she looked at Emma, her steel hair flat and dripping onto her face, the gun aimed at Harley, who looked bizarre on his weedy patch of earth, lying like a sunbather in a storm. And Billie smiled, nodded, and went to untie Penny Redmond. And as she did, she saw headlights, heard voices, and was glad of the rain so no one could tell that she’d burst into tears of relief.

  *

  “You did it, then,” Emma said. The police had taken Harley to the lockup, Penny and Wesley for observation. Harley had practically tortured Penny to try and find out who else knew about the heart and its engraving. Triple-A had towed Billie’s car and Emma was driving Billie home.

  “I didn’t do it,” Billie said. “You did. Kind of like ‘Superperson.’ You appeared out of nowhere and descended upon us in the nick of time.”

  “I had a more efficient weapon, that’s all. But I saw what you were doing. You were going to smash his skull. Kill him.”

  “And you’d consider that a loss to mankind?”

  “I’d consider it a mess. A PI is not supposed to be—”

  “—involved in an active homicide case,” Billie continued in a singsong voice for her employer.

  “—the perpetrator of a homicide case.”

  “That rule wasn’t in the book you gave me.”

  “It didn’t say you couldn’t murder people?”

  Billie shook her head. She was drenched and exhausted and filthy. And in a state of quiet joy.

  “Ach,” Emma said. “That’s the problem with book learning. Leaves things out. That’s why the excellent on-the-job training I provide is so important.”

  “So this was another goddamned learning experience,” Billie said.

  “Sure as hell.”

  “Then these hours—they count, right? Against my six thousand.”

  “I didn’t tell you to go chasing after a car.”

  Billie leaned back in her seat. Of course she was going to count them. Of course Emma was going to behave as if she’d somehow robbed her via those two—make it three—extra hours. But as that still left Billie with five thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven more hours to go, and probably just as many head-to-head arguments with this difficult, admirable woman, why waste breath now? Just because, in its own bizarre fashion, their test of wills, battle to the death, was enjoyable? At least it seemed so right now.

  Not a perfectly happy ending. There were too many casualties. But Emma had said to be contented with a just plain ending. And Emma, it turns out, was sometimes right.

  And that was good enough.