Move to Strike (35 page)

CHAPTER 30

A MAN BEGAN singing with the guitar. His voice was light and young. Paul could hear perfectly.

“Summers have passed since you caught my eye,

You were too beautiful to pass by,

I never believed I could hunger like this . . .”

Paul heard a moan. A voice, moaning in the background.

“Obsessed with your face, obsessed with your kiss . . .”

Another moan, ripped from a woman’s lungs.

“Nothing else mattered. Emptiness . . .”

He had been edging forward, his gun in hand. What was the man doing to the woman? Her moan was a chronic sound, like they had been doing whatever they were doing for a while, not the cry of active distress, so Paul could stay cautious and reconnoiter a little longer. The tunnel was widening into a sort of chamber, and now he saw the amorphous shadows at the far end coalescing into an outline, and he saw . . .

In the dim, cold cavern beyond, a huge figure sitting on the floor of the cave. No, no, two figures, one propped against the wall, one leaning on a large rock away from the wall, his back to Paul, holding a guitar. So the woman was against the wall in that intent posture, leaning forward.

The man sang on, but now the woman was talking as he sang. They were at least fifty feet ahead of him and didn’t seem to have heard him.

Her voice repeated the lyrics softly, and each syllable was clear. “Oh, it’s very true, it’s all emptiness . . .”

But the man didn’t answer her. He sang on.

“You took me right out of myself,

Yes you made me into somebody else,

Took me right out of myself . . .”

Was it possible Nina’s incredible theory had been right, and the man had chosen this hole in the ground as a hideout of some sort? All sorts of clammy thoughts struck him as his brain struggled to understand. Nicholas Zack must be insane. Had Sykes injured him terribly six years before? Had Nicholas avenged himself with the same sword?

Was it Zack? Was Daria with him?

His neck ached from holding it rigid for so long. He pulled back and rubbed it with one hand. What now? he asked them silently. Why do you meet here in this dead place?

The man stopped singing abruptly. His fingers made a clicking sound. Paul heard the woman murmur softly, “It’s such a miracle to find you again,” she said. His eyes caught a flash of blond hair.

Jan? Was Jan in there with Daria’s husband?

The whole thing was making him damn nervous and a lot more emotional than he should be.

“I don’t have much time, my love. She’s coming soon to look for you. She thought of this place, not me.”

The woman must be talking about Nina. Nina had called Daria to ask her about the property just before she called Paul.

He waited for the man to answer. Nothing. “Obsessed with your face, obsessed with your kiss— my love. My lying darling. Emptiness and more emptiness. You made love to me, but it was all a lie,” the woman said in that half-crying voice. “You brought it out. You made it so nothing else mattered. It wasn’t my fault. You brought out the monster.”

Paul stiffened as an image from his dream intruded itself into the blackness in front of him. The lizard, leaping into the air.

“I’m s-sorry,” she cried.

Oh, Christ, Paul thought. Painfully, his emotions in a twisting dark place and resisting all the way, he got himself off the ground and into a crouch, ready to move.

Why didn’t the man answer? Working hypothesis: he was angry, he wasn’t going to accept the woman’s apology, he was drugged, or mentally ill. Maybe all three. But the woman was still talking, and something still kept Paul from going out there where she could see him. He squinted, trying to see them better.

He wanted to hear more about her monster. Instead she moved toward the man and he let the guitar fall to the side, but there was something passive, weird about the way the man let her move to him and embrace him, that same weird indifference. Now she had her arms around him, and was sobbing into his chest.

Gently, she separated from him. The man seemed to have something in his hand. She was holding his arm; she seemed to be helping him to raise his arm and there was definitely something in his hand—it was raised toward her head—a gun . . .

Reacting instantly, Paul ran forward in a crouch. Somewhere down there his bum leg was on fire. His own gun raised, he ran toward them. “Freeze!” he shouted. “Drop the gun!”

He halted uncertainly, both hands outstretched, standing now about ten feet away, holding his gun directly on them.

The gun dropped from the man’s hand and the woman caught it in her lap. The man’s head fell forward. He toppled over at an odd angle. Paul drew closer, closer.

A grunt of shock escaped from his mouth. Involuntarily, he stepped back.

It was a body, dead for a long time.

“Daria,” he said, about to tell her to toss that gun out of harm’s way. But then he saw it wasn’t Daria, and this second shock made him stagger.

It was Beth Sykes, sitting there quietly with a portable boom box next to her. Her face was very dirty, and her eyes . . .

Emptiness.

Paul glanced quickly to the heap in the dirt, face-up, legs akimbo. Shreds of denim and bone, hanks of hair, and a desiccated head with skin still stretched tightly over it. He who once had had a wife and a daughter now had nothing but a big, gaping smile for no one. For the first time in Paul’s professional life that he could recall, he felt paralyzed by indecision.

She had been embracing this mummified corpse. She had pressed her gun into the dead hand, raised it.

His skin crawled.

“Beth,” he said. “The gun. Toss it toward me. Please.”

A pause. “Go on, shoot,” she said. “Please.”

“No. I don’t want to do that. It’s me. Paul. I work with Nina, remember?”

“Shoot me. Shoot me!” He listened as the air eddied up the passageways and swirled around Nicholas Zack, and felt its fingers chill his arms.

“The gun, Beth.”

She just sat there, her hands in her lap with the gun. This was a very dangerous situation. Paul thought she could probably shoot herself before he could stop her. His gun was useless since she wanted to die.

“The gun?” He tried again, gently. He moved toward her and she jumped. She had a tight grip on her gun there in her lap. He stopped again. Now about six feet separated them. If she moved it too high, pointed it at him—it was too dark in there to shoot to wound her. He’d have to kill her.

A voice inside him said, self-preservation, buddy, don’t think twice. He recognized that voice.

“I need it,” she said. “I’m sorry you came.”

“It’s Nicholas Zack, isn’t it? Can I see him?”

Following a hesitation, a small gesture from her seemed to make it okay. She got on her knees and crawled just out of his reach.

Watching her carefully and still holding his own gun on her, he touched the torso. Mummified. The air down here would preserve a body well. Easier for the forensics people to check out the cause of death, although he had a pretty good idea about that. Whereas the skin on the rest of the body was stretched tight or had fallen away, the shriveled neck remained somewhat intact, except for a long, black, gaping wound.

Next to the huddled figure, a Spanish guitar. Where Beth had sat, the boom box. “His voice was on a recording?” he said.

“He wrote that song for me.”

“How did he get here?” Paul asked, moving back from the body, favoring his leg.

“Bill put him here with his guitar, so everyone would think he just went away. Never even buried him. Bill didn’t like to do anything that might harm his hands.”

Beth raised the gun and took a shot at the ceiling. The blast in the enclosed space was deafening, and Paul almost rushed her. But she was holding her own gun very firmly. Dirt rained down on them for a few seconds. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

“Shoot me! Or maybe I can make us both die.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Then go away. We don’t want you here.” She was unrecognizable now, both of them were covered with a layer of dirt and some of the small stones had hit him hard when they’d rained down. Now he heard some ominous shifting above that made him even more nervous.

“Come with me, Beth.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Okay, okay. Look. Take it easy now. Listen. Let’s take a minute here and calm down.” Even as he said it, though, a sharp piece of timber fell onto his shoulder. He had never felt less calm. Talk to her, get her attention diverted, rush her . . .

“Did Bill kill him, Beth?”

“I killed him,” Beth said. She just said it, no fuss, no emotion. She brushed dirt out of her hair with one hand. He kept the flashlight off her face and on her hands, where the gun was.

“That’s a surprise,” Paul said. “I hadn’t thought of you. Tell me what happened, Beth. Why?”

She thought about whether she wanted to talk to him. Then she shrugged a little.

“Nicholas had decided to go back to Daria. He had an attack of conscience. He took my soul and smashed it and tore me to pieces, and I was supposed to wish him luck. He came to my house one night when Bill was gone and told me . . . we were in the study . . . I . . . this great angry hatred rose up in me and took over. The sword was right behind me. Nicholas never had a chance. He never saw it coming.

“I sat there with him for a long time. When Bill found us, he doped me up. Much later he told me that he buried Nicholas out in the desert. I never realized where until Nina asked Daria about this mine. Bill kept my secret. Even faked postcards from Nicholas and sent money to fool Daria. But I paid, oh, I paid. He had me now. He could have taken Chris from me, I knew that every second of every day. He had me, and he wouldn’t let me go, but he couldn’t forgive me. He was punishing me the whole time.”

“So you had to kill him? To free yourself?”

She breathed in deeply, and looked down at her gun. “Oh, no. It wasn’t like that at all. I just accepted my fate. Six years of hell went by. Daria and Nikki’s life destroyed —I couldn’t bear to see them. Six years of Bill’s tight lips, his hand squeezing my shoulder, the bed.

“Then Chris turned eighteen and started college. I had kept everything from him. He thought his parents had a happy marriage. You can’t imagine how hard that was. I gave that child a good stable home and he was wonderful, he was everything to me. When he left, I finally told Bill I was leaving him.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “And I lost Chris forever because of it.”

He had to keep her talking. He had to get that gun. “Tell me what happened then, Beth. I’m trying to understand.”

“No one can understand.”

“I can.”

“You’re not a killer. Like me.”

He almost told her she was wrong but kept his mouth shut.

Her white arm rose through the murk to push hair off her forehead. She stared at Nicholas Zack’s body now and almost seemed to be talking only to him.

“I told Bill I was leaving him. He could have called the police and had me arrested right then and there if he wanted but he didn’t. The scandal would ruin his practice and he would probably be arrested, too. He knew that. So he let me go without a fight. I went to LA to talk to a lawyer about a divorce. I planned to move south to be closer to Chris.”

Paul’s eyes flicked back to Nicholas Zack’s frozen face. The vacant eye sockets seemed to look back at him, bearing silent witness.

“Bill called me in LA.” She paused. “He said he would sign the settlement agreement my lawyer was drafting if I would come up right away on a plane he’d chartered for me.”

Paul was edging toward her again, not breathing, taking only an inch at a time. There were definite cracking sounds overhead. Although Beth’s hand gripped the gun, he could see the wavering ripple of nerves moving through her and down into her fingers. She was shaky, unstable. He didn’t know what to expect.

“Beth, please. I think we should get out of here,” he said.

“Go if you want.”

“Not if you’re going to shoot yourself as soon as I leave.”

Beth made a sound that he couldn’t quite distinguish, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Then stay a little longer, Paul,” she said. “It’s good to talk. I’ve held it in for so long.”

He almost left right then. He really wanted to go. The chances of saving her didn’t look good. But he said, “I’m still listening. I’m not leaving.”

“The night before I was scheduled to fly,” she said, “Dennis Rankin tracked me down. He wanted to talk to me about an opal strike on Grandpa’s land. That’s when I found out Bill wanted to cheat me.”

Paul was focusing all his energy on moving in minuscule increments. He watched for her hand to falter, to loosen, but all her vitality was concentrated in her right hand and on the gun.

She sighed. “I’m feeling quite tired, Paul,” she said, “but nobody knows yet what Bill did. I want someone to know.”

“You can rest outside, Beth. You can talk to me just as well where it’s safe. Just give me . . .”

“No. I don’t think I will. But I’ll tell you the rest of it. You’re a nice man, Paul. I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“That’s good, Beth.”

“I wanted to talk to Rankin without Bill knowing so instead of taking the charter I flew to Reno on a shuttle flight and drove up to Tahoe to meet him. When Rankin learned that I owned part of the land, he wanted to make a deal, so I said he could manage the strike. I was furious, I admit that. Bill was cheating me to keep me poor and weak. That was the only way he could keep me. I was so disgusted, so tired of living with a man who was my jailer. I decided to go home right then and pack a few boxes and leave for good.

“When I got home, I was so rattled I couldn’t find my house key in my bag, so I just gave up and rang the doorbell. Bill came to the door in a towel. He seemed completely confused to see me, but before I could find out if Chris had already gotten in, the phone rang in the study. Bill answered and I went into the kitchen to get some plastic bags for packing small things. I could hear him talking. I thought it must be Chris on the phone. After he talked for a minute or two, he—I didn’t understand what was going on. I’d never heard him like that before, not even when he lost a patient. I thought he was having a heart attack. He was screaming into the phone and I ran back in and he was writhing on the floor.