“Don’t do that,” Trevathan said. “Amateur! Here.” He handed Pilate a shoulder holster. “Keeps it out of the way and doesn’t advertise.”
“Thanks,” Pilate said. “I really appreciate all this.”
“Think nothing of it. I’m ready to retire from this shithole anyway.”
“Oh?”
“I have a place in Key West,” he said, forcing a smile. “Not too far from Sloppy Joe’s. Figure someday I’ll write a book about Hemingway and his multi-toed cats.”
Pilate turned to Kate, who stood in the living room watching Kara sleep on the couch, her arms folded tightly across her chest. “I’ll be back…with help,” Pilate said.
“I know. Just be careful, John. These people are crazy.” Tears rolled freely down her face. “John, do you think they killed Rick too?” The question startled Pilate. In the excitement, he hadn’t considered the death of her husband. “I don’t think so. Why would they?”
“Because…” she said, wiping her eyes and nose with a tissue. “Because he started asking a lot of questions after the fire at the mortuary. He started saying he thought it was arson. Rick even made some calls to the state police and the FBI.”
“When did he have his wreck?”
“A few months after the fire,” she said, hugging Pilate close.
“Oh God, Kate,” he said. “I just don’t know, but we’re going to blow this thing wide open. I promise.”
“I don’t want them to hurt Kara or Grif or you,” she said, sobbing.
Pilate squeezed her tight for a moment. He took her by the shoulders. “Kate, look at me.”
She looked into his eyes.
“This killing, all this bad stuff, it’s going to end now,” he said. “No one else is going to get hurt.”
“John, you better get moving,” Trevathan said, his voice low.
“Okay,” he said. Pilate kissed Kate, then the top of Kara’s head, and walked over to Trevathan, extending a hand.
“Thanks, boss. Take care of them.”
“Just a concerned old codger,” he said, shaking Pilate’s hand. “I’ll see you soon.”
Pilate nodded and stepped toward the kitchen back door. He switched off the light in the kitchen.
“Get ready,” Trevathan said. “And John…” “Yes?”
He heard the cocking of the Smith and Wesson in the dark. “Nobody’s going to get in here.”
Pilate ducked outside into the deluge, moving as quickly as he could into the first leg of his mile-long trek through the blizzard to the Cross College library.
The maze of alleys, backstreets, and trails Trevathan had shown him were fraught with numerous hazards, including snow-covered potholes, trashcans, and patches of invisible ice. He fell twice, the shock to his bruised knee thankfully absorbed by Trevathan’s padded snow gear. It was two in the morning, and visibility was nearly zero.
After forty-five minutes, Pilate crept up to the back of the library. The door was made of rusting old metal, set next to a loading dock. The sodium light above the door was partially obscured by ice. So far, so good.
He removed his gloves and fished in his pocket for the key. He found it and pushed it into the lock, but it wouldn’t fit. Assuming he was using the wrong one, he tried the other key, but it was a no go as well.
Pilate used his mini-flashlight to check the keys again. Nope. These are the right keys. Both had small tags on them: One said “library,” and the other said “bells.” He shone the light on the lock and saw that it was frozen.
“Shit.”
He ducked into a small alcove under the loading dock to consider his options. He could try and make it to the mortuary in the storm and risk getting lost and freezing to death, but that wasn’t the most favorable idea. He would have to try to warm the lock somehow. He mentally inventoried the contents of his pockets. He didn’t have any deicer, and his lighter wouldn’t stay lit in the wind. What he did have, however, were the small packets hunters carried in their gloves to keep their hands warm. Pilate removed two of the packets, activated them, and pressed them against the lock. He knew it would take a while, giving him time to be pelted with more ice and snow.
“Well, aren’t you the regular action movie star?” Simon said.
“Hey, pal,” Pilate said.
“You’re going to get yourself killed, you know.”
“Well, then, Simon, you die with me, don’t you?” Pilate pressed harder against the lock.
“That’s a good point, John. Work harder, you piece of shit.”
He tried the lock a few times over the next ten minutes. He felt the key going in further each time. Pilate just had to hope it worked before someone drove by in a snow plow or a snow- equipped police vehicle.
Ten more minutes passed, and Pilate was wearing out. He shoved the key in once more. This time it went in all the way. He turned the lock, and the heavy metal door creaked open, displacing powdery snow from the threshold.
His ears were assaulted by the beeping of the security system. “Nice to know something works,” he said. He found the glowing digital pad for the system and entered the numbers with his gloved hand. He fat-fingered it and the screen read “Armed: not accepted.”
“Damn it,” he said, biting the fingers of his glove and jerking it off his hand. He punched the numbers and hit the enter button. The beeping stopped, and the screen read “Disarmed: accepted.”
Standing in the darkness beside the library study carrels, Pilate shivered from a combination of cold, adrenaline, and pure nerves. He quietly stamped snow from his boots and brushed it off his lower pant legs.
He padded through the empty library, using only his wits and sense of touch to find the stairwell to the tower. He climbed one flight and came to the second floor entry.
Seized with an idea, he opened the door and felt around until he came across a photocopier. He hit the on switch and waited for it to warm up.
After he finished with the photocopier, he climbed to the top level of the clock tower and used Trevathan’s key to open the door to the carillon room. Inside the room, he found a small stool and a device that looked like a stereo deck from the 1970s, the electronic carillon. Red lights danced on its face next to indicators that read “standby.” The carillon was mercifully turned off after eleven most nights so the town could sleep in peace. It was set to come back on at seven a.m.
Colored glass windows, about a foot wide and three feet tall, were on each of the four walls. From outside the clock tower, they appeared pretty, but from inside, they obscured his view.
Pilate surmised the actual bells were just above him. Shining his flashlight up quickly, he saw a trapdoor in the ceiling, about ten feet high. Quasimodo he was not.
He sat back a moment, lit a cigarette, and contemplated how he had come hundreds of miles from a broken life and fallen right into the middle of a small town murder drama. He thought of his parents and how it would crush them if he died alone in that abysmal town. They’ll probably find my body in my car, crashed in a ditch—or maybe I’ll join that poor black kid at the bottom of the Missouri, chained to my steering column, my lips gone and my skull eternally smiling.
“Cheery,” Simon said.
“Yeah, it is.”
“It’s not over yet, you know.”
“I know.” Pilate exhaled. “How come I’m smoking this time? It’s usually you.”
“Go figure. Perhaps I’ve had enough of living dangerously.”
“Amen, brother.”
“Smart move, by the way, John.”
“What?”
“Photocopying the Bernard letter,” he said. “And how dramatic, putting copies of it in those books in particular.” Simon’s laugh rattled around Pilate’s head.
Pilate smiled at his own cleverness. He’d tucked a copy of the Bernard letter into the Book of John in the large century-old Bible on display in the philosophy section. He’d also put a copy in Leslie Charteris’s The Saint. “I couldn’t resist.”
“
You better take a nap. You should rest for a while and check the snow again around four,” Simon sounded kindly in Pilate’s head. His trademark sharp, sarcastic tone was gone.
“Who are you, my mother?”
“Simon says.”
Pilate crushed out the cigarette with the heel of his boot, drew his coat around him, and quickly dozed off.
When the bells chimed four times, he sat straight up, screaming, “What? Huh?” When he regained his wits by the fourth chime, he realized that though the carillon was not playing show tunes, the bells would still chime on the hour.
“Have we heard the chimes at midnight?” Simon said.
His chest thumping, he took deep breaths to calm himself. He stood and peered out the yellow stained glass window facing east. The snow was lighter now; he could see it falling in smaller flakes against the antique globes of the lamps of the quad below.
Now or never, he thought. He zipped his coat, slipped on his gloves, and opened the door. He locked it behind him and crept back down to the study carrels by the back door, then reached for the keypad of the security system.
“Hello, John Pilate,” Derek Krall’s voice erupted from the darkness.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Krall, get out of my way,” Pilate said, his eyes just making out Krall’s shape in front of him.
“Now, John, don’t do anything stupid. I’m here to help you,” he said.
“Help me?” Pilate felt the Glock in the holster under his arm.
“Yes.” Krall’s voice was calm.
“What are you going to do, set me up again? You’ve done a fairly masterful job of sticking my ass in the middle of all this, of making me the fall guy.”
“Well, what can I say? You were in the right place at the right time. You were so obvious. What you didn’t tell me, I easily tracked as you surfed the Internet doing your research. You really are way too trusting, John.”
Wait…Krall did give me the free wireless hookup and access to the library’s LexisNexis subscription. Of course! That bastard tracked everything I’ve looked up on the Internet! Shit. Now I feel really stupid, Pilate thought, mentally kicking himself.
“John, what’s done is done. Just give me the ledger and that letter, and I’ll tell everyone involved that you got away. You’ll be safe. With no evidence, nobody will believe you. You’ll just be another disgruntled employee.”
“Oh, I see. Like Brady Bernard?”
“I tried to save you earlier by throwing it all in the fireplace, but you insisted on toying with your fate.”
“I can’t believe Lindstrom is doing this,” Pilate said. “I mean, he’s a first-class asshole, sure, but not a damn killer.”
“True,” Krall said, his shape more visible. “What’s in it for you, though, Krall?”
“John, it’s so simple. I work for Lindstrom, yes. The man is a swine, and he did pay me to dig into Ollie’s background. What he didn’t count on was Ollie paying me three times as much to engineer this little conspiracy.”
“Son of a bitch,” Pilate said in disbelief. “He owns you.” “Didn’t somebody once say that if you appease a man’s
conscience, you can take his freedom away from him? Besides, Lindstrom’s going to have a little accident of his own,” Krall said. “Maybe not now, but soon—after things quiet down a little, after you disappear.”
“Just admit it, Krall. You won’t let me escape if I give you the evidence. You plan to kill me.”
“No, I actually don’t, but Ollie’s son will when he gets here. I’m just going to hold you here until then. Sorry, pal. There’s no other way out but through me.”
Pilate slowly put his hand in his coat and grasped the Glock grip in the shoulder holster. “Krall, I’m bigger and younger than you, and I have nothing to lose. I’ll kick your ass,” Pilate said.
“Well, yeah…you probably would if I didn’t have this gun.” Krall flipped a switch. A lamp on one of the study carrels flicked on.
Pilate’s eyes contracted painfully; he crouched down behind a bookshelf for cover.
“Irony of ironies…this gun,” Krall said, laughing. “It’s a German Luger. Belonged to a fella named Bernard. You may recall he used it a few times, to great effect.”
“Where’d you get it?” Pilate called over the shelf.
“Scovill sold it to me in a sheriff’s auction,” Krall said. “His daddy had saved it for years. Morgan didn’t have the heart to keep it lying around. He’s too soft, nothing like his daddy. Now that man could get things done—a real Martin Bormann type. Come down here. Don’t make me prove my marksmanship on you.”
“I’ll just wait here,” Pilate said. “Maybe I’ll do a little light reading.” He pulled the Glock from the holster and quietly loosed the safety. There was already a bullet in the pipe; all he had to do was aim it right.
“John, we can do this easy, or we can do this hard.” Krall cleared his throat in his nervous way. “I assure you—you’d rather go easy.”
“Can’t we make a deal?”
“Sorry, friend, but you don’t have a damn thing I want, except maybe that piece of ass, Kate. Of course, since you probably blabbed about all this to her, she won’t be around much longer either.”
Pilate’s anger rose, the one emotion that could conquer his anxiety and nerves. “Krall, she has a little girl,” Pilate said, peering over the railing at Krall, who was holding the Luger in front of him, his hand shaking.
“Yeah, I know.” He sounded genuinely remorseful. “Another orphan in the world. Look, I didn’t create this situation,” he said, irritated. “Enough of this bullshit. Please come out now.”
“Well, I could stay holed up here until classes start today,” Pilate said.
“Sorry, John. It’s a snow day. Classes are canceled.”
Fuck. “Okay. Goddamn it, I’m coming out. I’m too fucking tired to run anymore,” Pilate said. He put the Glock in his coat pocket, keeping his finger on the trigger. Rising and walking down the stairs, he held his left hand up.
“Both hands, John,” Krall said, gesturing with the Luger menacingly.
When Pilate was in full view, Krall made a surprisingly fluid motion and pointed the pistol at him. “I’m sorry, John.” Krall pulled the trigger, but instead of firing at Pilate, the cartridge exploded in the gun chamber, showering Krall with sparks and tiny shrapnel. Krall dropped the traitorous weapon and covered his bloody face with his hands, screaming. “Mother…fucker,” he bleated.
Pilate pulled the gun from his pocket, his hand shaking as he pointed it at Krall, who had slipped into unconsciousness. His chest rose with his breaths, though, and his wounds didn’t look life threatening, but his face was lacerated badly from his gun’s explosion. “Dirty old guns,” Pilate said, stepping over Krall. “Serves you right, asshole.”
His ears ringing from the echo of the exploded gun, Pilate sprinted to the back of the library, launched himself from the door, and ran for the tree line that demarcated the town of Cross from the college. Adrenaline got him there in only a moment or two, even on a bum knee, a bad ankle, and in the drifting snow. From there, he had the treacherous trek through the fields to the mortuary and the salvation of the radio.
As he ran, he replayed what had happened to Krall, amazed at his luck and relieved that he hadn’t had to try to shoot the treacherous bastard.
The snow drifted as high as five feet in places, and Pilate fell flat on his face just yards away from the deer stand he’d encountered the day before. The frozen snow slapped his face hard. It felt almost like a burn.
Sitting up on his knees, the right one throbbing, he brushed the ice and snow from his face and the front of his coat. He had only about another hour before morning was well and truly there to expose him to his pursuers. His legs ached, and his lungs burned. Damn cigarettes.
“Get up, John, Simon says,” Pilate muttered.
Pilate got to his feet, putting one foot in front of the other, slogging heavily through the thick snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Another hour, another mile. The sun was up, the clouds dampening its enthusiasm enough to give him some cover, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Thankfully, the hill overlooking Nathaniel Mortuary was only fifty yards or so away. He pushed himself to crown the hill in a matter of minutes.
Prone on the hilltop, he looked down on the mortuary. Seeing no one, he felt better about the whole adventure.
He stumbled down the hillside to the window he had broken out. Scovill had undoubtedly found it, as it had been covered over with cardboard and duct tape. Pilate kicked the cardboard in with one thrust of his trembling left leg and lowered himself inside.
The morning light leaked in through the windows, though most of the room was cloaked in shadow. He unzipped his ruined coat and felt warmer immediately. The heat was on.
Pilate smelled something he hadn’t smelled before: tobacco, cigar smoke to be exact. He also noted an unfamiliar smell that he surmised was heating oil; the floor was covered with it.
Pilate drew his gun, turned off the safety, and looked around. The small desk had been rifled again, much more carelessly this time. The door to the storage closet was broken in. The open cylinder of Brady Bernard’s ashes lay on the floor, the cremains dumped everywhere.
The bodies of Martin and Millie Nathaniel still lay on the tables, though their sheets had been removed. Someone had used a scalpel to split open the bodies, looking into the desiccated, crumbling husks in apparent hopes of finding the elusive ledger.
Pilate grimaced, marveling at just how sick and desperate the culprits were. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy creaking from upstairs, heavy footsteps. “Shit,” he whispered.
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