Trophies (2 page)

"Captain?" It was the man who'd stepped
between us, a plainclothes detective in a button-down shirt and
dark slacks.

Pounding him wouldn't help, either. I forced
myself to look at him. I even remembered his question, although I
was too distracted to focus. "Yes, I own several handguns."

"And were you in the war?" His voice was
professional, beautifully modulated, and easy to listen to, even at
that moment.

Even if he was an irritant.

"Yes." Was I ever.

The long, drawn-out
skrip
of a closing
zipper demolished all my good intentions. The doughy crime scene
technician slowly sealed the body bag. The shadow of the canvas
flaps fluttered across her blank eyes. Then she vanished
inside.

The air left my lungs as if I no longer
needed oxygen, either. Again tunnel vision narrowed my field of
focus, this time to the gurney as it rumbled past. The technician's
hand rested atop the lumpy canvas.

I yearned to go for him again and fought the
flashback-induced impulse. Although the battlefield had vanished
into the scattered recesses of my mind, the subconscious, primal
scream of combat still goaded me. Then I caught up with what the
irritant standing beside me had just said in his elegant tenor.

Where were you last night.

I stared at him while the implications of
that question soaked into the corners of my damaged brain. How long
that took, while we locked eyes and assessed each other, I don't
know; accurately measuring time has never been one of my finer
accomplishments. But the details of his perfect face — expensively
styled bronze-toned hair rippling above his ears, brown eyes steady
and suspicious, smooth tan that had nothing to do with working
outside, not a trace of stubble on the square jaw — left an
after-image on my retinas like the strobing emergency lights. How
could he stand being so damned perfect? It didn't matter whether
pounding him would help or not. I went for him instead.

Again hands hauled me back. And suddenly
cousin Patricia was between us, grabbing handfuls of my sport shirt
and shaking me, or at least it. "Charles, for God's sake, what is
wrong
with you?"

I nearly told her, nearly reminded her of my
diagnosis, but couldn't see the point even if I was an Ellandun and
lived for the fight. The gurney and the moment were gone and the
bloody adrenaline finally snapped. I shuddered beneath her clenched
fists as the aftereffects kicked in. From the way her already wide
green eyes were stretching wider, she felt it, too.

"Charles?" This time, her voice was less than
a whisper and it broke in the middle of my name.

If I could have stopped the shaking, to
protect Patty I would have done it. I'd failed her, too, and again
I closed my eyes. Whatever showed in my all-too-transparent face,
she didn't need to see it.

Because I'd tried to tackle a plainclothes
police detective, Boston's finest slung me into the back of a squad
car to cool down, one of an armload of emergency vehicles scattered
about the street. They closed the doors, too, and how the July heat
that rapidly built up inside that car was supposed to help me cool
down, I cannot imagine. The interior stank from the stale fast-food
wrappers littering the floorboards and the stain of something I
didn't want to identify on the part of the seat I avoided.

I'd put up with all of it if I could have
Aunt Edith back. She couldn't possibly be dead.

Outside the patrol car and a few yards away,
Patricia and Brother Perfect chatted like old friends, her eyes
sliding sideways to check on me every minute or so, his never
leaving her damp and smudged face. He'd positioned her so she
couldn't see the blood. Her mousy brown hair strained back in a
knot that looked painted on, but then so did her jeans, and with
her streamlined figure, I'm certain the average male never noticed
the hair. To give him credit, Brother Perfect's gaze didn't drop,
not even to her green cotton camp shirt, halfway unbuttoned from
the bottom and tied in a knot above her belt buckle. Perhaps the
stained handkerchief she used to rearrange the sad remnants of her
makeup put him off.

Finally she walked away, ducked beneath the
yellow crime-scene tape, and waited outside the perimeter, staring
at me in the back of the squad car with her lower lip between her
teeth. Brother Perfect watched her until their eyes met for a brief
glance, and then he turned, opened the squad car door, and slid
into the front passenger seat.

To give him further credit, he didn't bother
scolding me. "You say you have several guns. Tell me about
them."

I rubbed my eyes. "I own an M-16, a Mauser
sniper's rifle—"

"Handguns, Captain. Tell me about your
handguns."

To hell with him. I moved over until I
breathed the outside air. "I have a Colt .45, two old Walther nine
millimeters and two new ones—"

"What's the smallest bore handgun you
own?"

The question threw me until I realized the
holes in Aunt Edith's lungs had been small. "The nine
millimeters."

"No twenty-two?" he asked. "Nothing smaller
than a nine?"

"No," I said.

He stared at me for a long moment. The shakes
had diminished as the adrenaline ebbed away, leaving me taut and
intensely aware, and the skeptical curl of his lip made his opinion
of my veracity perfectly clear. Again my temper began heating —
there was something about him that made that a delightful process —
but I swore this time I'd hang onto my self-control.

"I've kept records," I said. "And my LTC
Class A and FID are both in order. You're welcome to check
them."

"Thank you." The tone of his voice left no
doubt he'd do so whether I volunteered them or not. "Are you
carrying now?"

"No." But I intended to rectify that as soon
as possible.

"So where were you last night?"

"At home." I gave him the address of my condo
on the waterfront, north of Burroughs Wharf and well away from the
tourist congestion at the Aquarium and Rowe's Wharf. He didn't
write anything down; perhaps he had a photographic memory. "I had
dinner with Aunt Edith around seven, got home around nine thirty or
a bit after, and stayed in."

She had tried to persuade me to be sociable
and forgiving, get involved with her latest bloody art show, see
the family while everyone was in town as if I had a particle of
interest whatsoever in them. The remembrance of how little
encouragement I had given her during that, our final conversation,
set my insides squirming.

"Can anyone confirm that?"

I hadn't even checked email. "No."

That internal squirming had a distinctly
frigid tinge to it now. He'd gun for motive next; wasn't that how
they did it on those stupid cop shows?

But he surprised me by motioning me out of
the car. He leaned atop the hood, his perfect face strobed by the
popping emergency lights so that he seemed dipped in blood then
wiped clean, over and over again. I knew that image would stay in
my nightmares for a long time to come. Something else to appreciate
about the man.

"Don't leave town," he said, and walked
away.

seventeen years earlier

"William." Mum paused in the library doorway,
keys in hand. She wore her best silk traveling suit and a twist of
pearls, overdressed for a quick delivery of her younger son to the
next town, although I liked the color. Poised as she was on the
balls of her strappy sandals, chin in the air and eyes alive, she
seemed to hover on the verge of something long desired and
all-too-long out of reach. "Charles is leaving for school."

I peered around her, careful to keep air
between us and not bothering to hide my disgust. I wanted to give
no sign of anything that hinted at solidarity and if I hurt
anybody's feelings, well, mine were marked a bit, too.

My father sat in the velvet wing chair by the
tall narrow windows, sunlight spilling across the planes of his
angular face and highlighting the hook of his Roman nose. Even at
home, his shave was close, his black hair parted and combed, and
the leather-bound case book resting on his crossed knees didn't
dare crease his dark slacks.

He glanced back and forth between Mum and me
as if wives and eleven-year-old sons, disgusted or otherwise,
weren't normal inhabitants of his legal world. Then his expression
sharpened and his lips thinned. He shot out his left arm, yanking
the cuff back from his curved Hermes watch, and glanced at its
face, angling his head back as if looking down his nose at such a
trifling domestic event. "Well. Have a good first term, then." He
returned to his reading. "If you must marry immediately, consider
not getting her pregnant until you've both graduated."

My elder brother William Junior, at nineteen
the family prodigy and already reading law at Cambridge, had just
baptized William the Third. I gave Father points for the attempt at
humor although I refrained from smiling.

"For God's sake, get over it." Mum sounded
tired rather than angry. "Get over all of it. What time do you
leave for London?"

I had thought her green silk suit, so
suitable for her peaches-and-cream English looks, had been donned
in my honor. Perhaps I should have known better, but the slight hit
home. At least she wasn't mailing me and my trunk from the post
office.

Father didn't look up again. "One hour."

"I should return by then. Come along,
Charles."

My trunk was already in the boot of the car
and my uniform, a rather natty combination of navy blue jacket and
tan trousers, was upon my scrawny self. There seemed nothing else
to say, or, in my own case, nothing at all. I followed Mum through
the vestibule, past the glass case crammed with William's shining
trophies, and out to the car for the ten-minute drive to my new
school.

Ten minutes. Even after months of getting
over it, as Mum said, it still rankled that I wasn't going anywhere
interesting nor any further from home. Mum, I knew, had wanted to
send me to Eton, which might have been brilliant. Father had opted
for the local school at Corwald, the same school William had
attended, and of course he won. Their compromise, that I board
rather than commute, pleased no one, least of all me. If I was
going to bother adjusting to a new environment the least they could
offer was Outer Mongolia, rather than here where the family was so
well known and I would have to compete against the memory of
William's perfection. As much as I loved him, in a small-brother
sort of way, having him around was an awful bore.

"For God's sake," Mum said again.

I glanced up from my scuffing feet, which
were leaving new-shoe black streaks on the steps. She was already
at the car with the driver's door open.

"Why can't you be more like William?"

Three months ago I would have apologized.
Even a week ago I might have wheedled. Now there didn't seem any
point. I clambered into the rear seat of the Lancia, fastened the
belt, and passed the silent trip watching the Wiltshire downs roll
past. The furious lump in my throat refused to go away.

The Corwald School had started as some rich
fool's impression of a medieval monastery, although its multiple
wings looked more like snakes sprouting from a masoned Medusa's
head than anything truly reverential. I loathed its grey stone and
elegant lawns on sight, although the swimming pool, tennis courts,
and well-trodden soccer field to the rear didn't seem all that bad
even to my jaundiced gaze. That day, the front was crowded with
families seeing off their outcasts, and Mum double-parked rather
than back and fill into a spot.

A compact man with a cheerful babble helped
Mum lift my trunk from the boot. His sandy hair was tousled beneath
his Tudor bonnet and he wore a black master's academical gown and
white hood although he didn't seem much older than William.

Mum drove off leaving us standing on the
steps. I didn't bother to wave.

"Cheer up, Mr. Ellandun." Even his voice
smiled with him. "We're going to have a lot of fun this term. My
name's Hardenbrook, by the way. Drama, literature, and soccer."

I hadn't spoken all day and took the
precaution of clearing my throat first. "How do you do." That
seemed a stark response to his attempted kindness, so I added, "I
like Shakespeare."

"Do you?" The way Hardenbrook said it, I was
the first student he'd ever met who did. "You know, I taught your
brother William when he was here."

If that had been intended to reassure me, it
fell flat. After all, once he got to know me and compared me to
William, I was through. On the spur of that moment, I decided not
to like him nor anyone else there.

Not far away stood a family of five, parents
and two small girls seeing off a boy whose high rounded forehead,
small chin, and anxious expression made him look rather like an
egghead, although I supposed he couldn't help that. His father, a
leathery-looking sort wearing a light summer suit, draped a long
arm about the boy's shoulders as if afraid to let him go.

"We're starting term with
A Midsummer
Night's Dream,
" Hardenbrook said. "You've read that one, of
course?"

To test drive my new unfriendliness, I glared
at one of the little girls. She stared back, her blue eyes in a
similar face giving her a resemblance nearer the delicacy of a
Fabergé egg rather than anything from a farmyard. As we matched
stares, hers became more and more indignant. I wondered if she'd
cry, but instead she yanked at the hem of her mother's floppy cloth
coat.

I turned away. "Yes. Of course, it's one of
my favorites." Although I felt more in common with King Lear, the
lucky sod.

Hardenbrook glanced down as I glanced up. His
chin tilted and his smile faded. Then suddenly it was back, bigger
than ever. "You know, every year the school performs
A Midsummer
Night's Dream
for Parents' Night in the spring and first-years
can try out." His grin turned conspiratorial. "I could picture you
as Puck."