Half a minute later, the tide and current had carried me out of viewing range. I put the rifle down, placed the oars back in the water, and rowed back upriver to a point where I could once again drift abreast of the house and try to appraise the situation further. A tug pulling a barge out in the deep channel would help some, since I knew that when the wake generated by the tug reached me, the rowboat would be raised two or three feet, giving me a better angle to see what was going on in the music room. I unscrewed the scope from its fitting on the rifle barrel, waited.
The tug's bow wave arrived just as I was drifting in line with the house. As the rowboat rode up on the swell, I put the scope to my eye, sighted-and what I saw in the second or two before the boat dipped down in the wave's trough disturbed me very much indeed. Mary was sitting at her piano over by the recording console, and appeared to be playing. Garth was sitting very stiffly in a chair near the center of the room, the bright overhead lights glinting off what appeared to be a bare wire wrapped around his neck.
While trying to decide whether Garth with a wire around his neck was sufficient reason to execute Carver, a second swell raised the rowboat back up. I sighted through the scope again as another person, a slight woman with silver-streaked, wheat-colored hair like my brother's, entered the room. I put the scope down. I would be doing no shooting from ambush. First of all, I could miss, and there would be no second chance; then there was no telling what Chick Carver would do with his hostages, including the littlest one. Even if I didn't miss, the last thing in the world the littlest hostage needed to see was the image of a high-velocity, soft-nosed bullet exploding a man's skull. April Marlowe's presence in the house almost certainly meant that Vicky was there too. I might gamble with the lives of Garth and Mary, in an effort to save them, but not the child's; too many people she loved and had once trusted had already tried a similar trick, and had twisted her mind, and almost killed her, in the process.
I had no Plan B, but it was time to put it into effect anyway. Whatever Plan B might turn out to be, it had to unfold inside the house, where I could further appraise and try to control the situation, minimizing any physical or further psychological harm to Vicky.
I rowed the boat to shore, worried now that my tardiness in arriving at the house could suddenly trigger Chick Carver into a killing frenzy. I landed a hundred and fifty yards downriver, where the scraping of the boat as I pulled it up on the shore couldn't be heard in the house. I wrapped the painter attached to the bow around a rock, then hurried along the shoreline to the house. As I went up the path beneath the overhang, I inspected the underside of the house, near its foundation, on the off chance that Carver might have planted explosives. There didn't seem to be any-which didn't mean that explosives might not be planted at the front or sides, but I didn't have time to check out the entire structure.
I took off my jacket, unstrapped my shoulder holster, and removed the Beretta. I shoved the gun into the waistband of my slacks, against my spine, then tossed the shoulder holster and harness off to the side. Then I took a deep breath, worked my face up into something I hoped resembled a smile, and pushed through the screen door. Mary was still playing the piano, and the decidedly incongruous music of Chopin drifted through the house.
"Hello?" I called loudly in my best faux-cheery voice. "Anybody home? How come I don't smell anything cooking? I'm hungry."
The music stopped. "In here, Mongo." It was Garth's voice, flat, with no trace of emotion.
I walked through the living room, and when I saw that Chick Carver wasn't standing in the doorway to greet me, I whipped the Beretta out of my waistband and placed it on the shelf of a bookcase that stood adjacent to the entrance to the music room. It was a snap decision; leaving the gun behind was a calculated risk, since I might never have a chance to get at it again, but I still had the Seecamp in my ankle holster, and it would have to be enough. If Carver saw or sensed that I'd known he was waiting for me, and that I had come armed, it would lessen any chance I might have of getting the drop on him.
I walked into the room, stopped just inside the door, and affected shock at seeing Chick Carver-at the same time quickly glancing around the room to see what the situation was.
Vicky was not in the room, which was at once both a relief and a worry. Mary was at her piano, staring at me with a strange expression on her face that I found impossible to read. April was sitting very straight in a chair a few feet in front of the piano, her feet flat on the floor, and her delicate hands folded in her lap. My witch friend and ex-lover looked pale but composed, as I would have expected. Garth was strapped into a metal chair in the center of the room, his pants legs rolled up and his bound bare feet in a tub of water. The wire around his neck was the stripped end of a cable, which snaked down from his body and across the floor to an amplifier with a glowing green light that indicated it was turned on. An auxiliary cable connected the amplifier to a foot pedal that was used for electric guitar special effects. The pedal, with its glowing purple, red, and amber lights, was only inches from Carver's right foot. If he stepped on the pedal, my brother, sitting in the improvised electric chair, would die instantly and noisily as his flesh burned and his brain boiled.
The tall, gaunt director of this little melodrama was still leaning against the windowsill, looking quite pleased with himself. In his right hand he held a cheap, nickel-plated Saturday Night Special, and it was pointed at my chest. I looked at Garth. His expression, as usual, was impassive, but I thought I detected more than a trace of curiosity and concern in his soulful brown eyes-understandable, under the circumstances, since he had been depending on me to pull off a rescue. Now we were both wondering what I was going to do next.
"You just keep turning up like a bad penny, don't you, Chick?" I said to the man across the room.
His self-satisfied expression instantly changed to one of rage. When he spoke, his raspy, nasal voice was even more high-pitched than usual, sharp and almost petulant, like a child's. I didn't like the sound of it at all. "Don't call me Chick! My name is Sacra Silver!"
"All right, Sacra Silver, what's the story here? You trying to graduate from accessory to mass murderer? As far as I know, you have yet to manage to kill anyone on your own. I'd think you'd want to keep it that way, quit while you're ahead."
"Shut up! Come in the room!"
"I am in the room."
"Come further into the room! Do as I say, you dwarf fuck, or I step on this pedal and turn your brother into a French fry!"
I walked to the center of the room, stopped beside Garth, looked over at April. "Are you all right?" I asked quietly.
"Shut up!" Carver barked as my witch friend nodded slowly. "Raise your arms to your sides and turn around very slowly!"
I did so-and was very happy I'd left the Beretta behind.
Carver continued in his angry child's voice, "Now open your shirt. Pull it all the way up."
"What's your problem, Sacra?" I asked as I began to unbutton my shirt.
"You're late!"
"I had business with a client, and I said so over the phone. Weren't you listening?"
"I didn't hear your car pull into the driveway."
"I just got a new muffler."
"Open your shirt and pull it up. Turn around."
"Listen, Sacra," I said, holding my shirt open and slowly turning, "if I'd known you were here, taping our conversation wouldn't exactly be high on my list of priorities of the things I'd like to do with you. Now, I asked you what was going on. Why all these other people? I thought this was between you and me."