Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (26 page)

They had no choice on foot. They had to take either the back trail toward the Castle or the coastal trail leading toward Kempshall’s crypt. I ran down the steps, skidded around the corner in the mud, and went down hard on my left hip. I heard myself moan. There was the woodpile. Jellyroll’s woodpile. Somewhere inside was his chipmunk.

I crawled in the mud past the woodpile toward the Castle trail, looking for tracks. Wouldn’t I see tracks? If they’d just come this way—But what if they went the other way?

Christ, tracks everywhere! Waffle-soled boots, dog tracks, and barefoot tracks. Crystal’s tracks. The imprint of her instep could break my heart. The wind howled. I was shivering.

The tracks led unmistakably toward the Castle trail. I ran as fast as I could under the conditions. My pain—I could feel it— was focusing down into a hot, lethal rage. I was glad. I felt calm now. I loved my gun and the death it would deal. No matter what, the Desmonds would never leave the island alive. I skidded to a stop before I knew why. Had I heard something? I was gasping too loudly to hear anything. I held my breath…

Crystal! She was calling my name! From where? Was it a trap? I ran along the flat part of the trail where the undergrowth thickened. I slowed. I couldn’t see around the next bend. Anything could be waiting.

I turned a corner, and there she was—

She was leaning against a tree. Waving her arms overhead. Was she unhurt? But why didn’t she come toward me? She was crying and holding her arms out to me, but she didn’t come to me. Why? She was naked from the waist up—

They had chained her by the neck to the trunk of a fat spruce tree. I held her as best I could. I’d worn extra layers for the row. I peeled off my slicker and then my fleece jacket, which I wrapped around her.

“It was Desmond! Desmond and that little fucker! His name is really Perry. It was his idea to strip me like this before chaining me—to slow you down. They’re going to the Crack to get their boat. They mean to take Jellyroll to the mainland because that’s where the press is, covering the murders. Hurry, you might be able to catch them!”

“I can’t leave you like—”

“Yes, you can! Go!” They had wrapped the chain twice around her neck and then locked it behind the tree, so there was no chance she could duck out of it even with my help.

“What are they going to do to Jellyroll on the mainland?”

“You know what they’ll do. They’ll do what they threatened to do. They killed Sid, Artie. That little fucker was laughing about it!”

“…Is that strangling you?”

“No. But I’m not going anywhere.” Her wet hair streaked over her brow. I pushed it out of her eyes.

“Was Jellyroll terrified?”

She cried. “It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. He kept looking back over his shoulder at me as they dragged him off.” She collected herself and whispered, “Go.”

I turned and ran. I ran hard, sometimes leaping obstructions, jinking around holes. I wanted to make time here on the flat ground, because I wouldn’t be able to run once the trail climbed near the patch of wildcat granite on the way up to the Castle.

I was near full speed when I saw the boots, the legs of someone lying face down across the trail. I saw this lower half of what I assumed was a dead man; it registered in my brain—look, there’s a corpse in the ferns—but my body couldn’t respond. I tripped on his feet, and went airborne. The gun flew from my hands as I threw them out to break my landing—

Sharp pain. Something bad had happened to my left hand, but the pain didn’t have any specificity yet. I rolled on my side and cradled my hand against my chest as if it were a baby bird fallen from the nest. I didn’t want to look at it yet. I shimmied back on my ass in the mud and the rain to see who was dead.

Perry was dead. Dick Desmond’s phony son from hell had left this life, and that was fine with me. Save ammo. His head was turned sideways—we were almost face-to-face before I realized my glasses were gone. His eyes were open, but they were milky. They didn’t blink when raindrops struck them. His lips were pursed as if he’d been slurping blood juice off his empty plate when the blow fell.

The blade had hit him smack in the left ear. There was a deep puddle of half-coagulated blood beneath his head but curiously little on the point of impact. The guy’s ear was split in half horizontally, and most of the two halves had followed the blade into
the black wound. What remained of his ear looked like a spring bud on a certain cherry tree in Riverside Park.

A sweet little patch of wildflowers grew among the ferns near Perry’s crown, but I didn’t know what they were. Were they pearly everlasting? It seemed sad that my study of wildflowers had come to nothing before the corpses started showing up. A single mosquito landed on Perry’s brow near his wound, wiggled a couple of times getting set and plowed her thing through his skin. I could see it penetrate. I watched it with a terrible concentration. Oddly, I found the juxtaposition, the incongruity (or something) hilarious. I didn’t exactly laugh. I made some kind of noise, but it wasn’t exactly laughter. And I still hadn’t looked at my hand.

TWENTY-FOUR

I
 was about ready to look. I sat in the mud with my knees drawn up, my back turned on the corpse. If the corpse came here to harm Jellyroll, then he got what he deserved, tough shit. I wondered who turned him into a corpse, but I didn’t have time to speculate; I had to get running again. So I’d just take a quick look at the old digit, a glance, and get moving again. I didn’t need to dwell on it, to make myself sick with it—

I flashed it up in front of my face. There was a clear problem with my pinkie. My pinkie flopped over at a grotesque angle like a fallen soldier behind its fellows. I moved it gently. I could see the socket gophering beneath the skin. I reached around behind my normal fingers, took hold of the errant one, and tried to lever it back into position. I yelped in pain, but I accomplished nothing. It wouldn’t go unless I wrenched it. Christ, I hated the thought of wrenching it. Maybe I would wrench it clean off; maybe only skin held it on.

I began to sob. My shoulders bounced uncontrollably with it. I had reached the end of my rope. My dog was probably already dead. My lover was chained to a tree by her neck. Sid was murdered. What hope was there? None. I stopped sobbing abruptly without decision. I just stopped. I don’t know precisely why.

I’d leave my finger like that for now—I could shoot the gun one-handed—but it would be better if I could cover the hand in something so it wouldn’t catch on objects as I ran through the woods. I still had a long way to go. I hadn’t even reached the Castle ruins yet, not nearly. How far was the Crack from the
Castle? I didn’t really know, I’d never been from the Castle to the Crack. Why exactly was I going there, anyway? What was the point of fighting psychos if they just keep coming at you? Sooner or later you’d run out of will, energy, ammo. I clenched my jaw against that kind of hamstrung despair. My finger throbbed maddeningly, my dog was probably dead, but, goddamnit, I would keep struggling for the terrible retribution I would inflict, for the pleasure of rollicking in their spurting, arterial blood. The wind keened in the treetops. Or was I making that noise?

I located my glasses after only a brief search. They listed badly to starboard, but they were intact. I could see. I’d missed vision. Things don’t seem quite so dreadful when you can see them, even if they are exactly that dreadful. I went crawling around after my shotgun—

Somebody was coming my way on the trail! I couldn’t see anybody, but I could hear rocks clunking together. I couldn’t find my shotgun. If I had found it, I can’t say with confidence that I wouldn’t have used it on sight, just started blasting away, no questions asked. But I had to abandon the search for the gun and crawl off the trail into the fern forest to hide. The ferns felt good against my face, like lace, but I remembered the visible wake Jellyroll had left when he’d passed through them, so I didn’t go in very far before lying motionless. I felt no wind down there, stillness, the small sound of my breathing, of rain droplets against my face. I could
feel
the stranger’s approach, a soft thudding in my chest.

I peeked up. His back was to me—this is when I might have shot him. He was bending over Perry’s body. Returning, maybe, to the scene of the crime. He wore brown woolen pants, lace-up rubber boots with leather tops, a dirty white sweater, and a yellow slicker with the hood drawn up. A local. He nudged the body with his toe. Perry would never move again. The stranger straightened, looked around as if surprised, frightened by the corpse in the ferns.

I ducked flat and held my breath…

He dressed just like Hawley, but he was too small to be Hawley. Yet he was carrying that same canvas gym bag, the one Hawley had carried his hatchet in. But then I remembered something—Hawley’s gym bag had broken handles. These handles were not broken. His hood was drawn tight around his face, and I had only caught a glimpse of it when he turned my way. What had I seen? There was something wrong with the face, I couldn’t tell exactly what, but it had looked familiar, and it did not belong to Dick Desmond. Maybe it belonged to a friend, an ally. I could have used either. I craned my neck to look up. Our eyes met—

It was Clayton Kempshall!

“Artie!” he said. “Artie, is that you?”

“Hello, Clayton.” I stood up in the ferns.

“Did you kill this guy, Artie?”

I giggled mirthlessly, hysteria tickling the edges of my mind. “No, Clay, I didn’t. I thought maybe you’d killed him.”

Clayton giggled, too. He also sounded a little hysterical. He pulled back his hood. His face was streaked with grime; his matted hair stuck straight out on the sides. His hands, too, were caked with dirt. Clayton edged some ferns aside with his boot to see the dead guy’s face and said, “No, I didn’t kill
him
. I don’t even know him. Who was he?”

“He was one of the stalkers. Dick Desmond is the other stalker.”

“Dick Desmond? Not Dick Desmond from
Ten Pins?
”

“Yeah. Do you know him?”

“Not personally. You know who knows him? Kevin James knows him.”

“…Desmond has Jellyroll now. I think he’s taking him to the Crack. I’ve got to go after him, Clay.” I pointed up the trail toward the Castle.

“He’s got Jellyroll—? Want me to go with you? I know this island. Teal Island. I grew up here, you know?”

“Sure—”

“Well, you don’t want to go that way. Come this way. This is a shortcut.” He stepped over the corpse and headed off into the ferns. I followed. The Castle ruins seemed to be somewhere up on the left. We appeared to be going around the hill rather than over it. When I caught up, he said, “You haven’t been having a very relaxing stay, have you?”

I giggled again. Maybe there was a little more hysteria in this giggle.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Off the beaten track, I was already disoriented, but I followed. I watched the back of his head and wondered if he’d killed anybody recently. I wondered how to approach the question before I became totally lost. Clumsily, I decided: “What have you been doing, Clay?”

He waved his arm vaguely as if to take in the entire island. “I’ve been pondering things. The past. Trying to remember. I thought if I came back here, I might discover something. I’ve been living up in the ruins.”

“You’ve been here on the island the whole time? I mean, you haven’t gone to the mainland?”

“No, staying here was the point. I thought if I immersed myself in the past, I’d remember something about it. Actually, it was my analyst’s idea.”

“How did it work?”

“I don’t want to evaluate it too much yet, but one thing seems clear, Artie. I killed my father.” With that he held the gym bag out at eye level and gave it a shake. It rattled like—well, bones.

“You mean, he’s…in there?”

Clayton nodded slowly. “Remember that day on the pier you were telling me about the stalkers, and I invited you to the
boathouse? You said there was a cartoon about Jellyroll. The stalker killed him with a hatchet, remember?”

The wind blew the rain against our faces; I staggered. “Yes,” I squeaked.

“Such a horrible thought, it struck me. I kept thinking about it all that night and the next day, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I began to think it had something to do with me personally…Artie, I knew exactly where he was buried. I don’t know—I don’t remember anything else, but I knew just where my father was buried. Nobody else knew. I went and dug him up. Twisted, huh? Well, I thought it would help me remember, sort of like a talisman.” He stopped, turned, and looked at me to see how I was reacting.

“Did the dogs disturb you?” I asked.

“Yes!” He patted his chest as though his heart were still pounding. “Those dogs. Here I was all alone, except for the skeleton of my own father which I’d just dug up, and suddenly it’s the hounds from hell! I ran. I just freaked and ran until I couldn’t run anymore.”

“That must have been terrifying, Clayton,” I said lamely.

Poor Clayton began to cry. “Maybe he wasn’t such a bad man. Maybe it was just me.”