“You’re being used, Goodwin.”
Then, to Shaw’s dismay, another voice was calling, “Evie? You in there? Did what you asked. I’ve got Colter’s car outside. What’s with the Mercedes?”
It was Jason Barnes. Fontaine would have told him to bring the rental to the Samsons’ factory. And it was obvious why.
We just need to add another piece or two...
Barnes would be the second piece.
Ignoring the gun, Shaw shouted, “Jason, run! Get out of here. And call the cops!”
“What?” came the amused voice.
“Don’t do it,” Shaw said firmly to Fontaine. “It’s pointless now. I’ve—”
Barnes entered the factory, and before he could even squint to adjust his eyes to the dark, Fontaine shot him twice in the head. He dropped like a wet rag.
Shaw closed his eyes briefly. No...
Goodwin gasped. “My God. What’ve you done?”
Like a lecturing high school teacher, she said, “You’re in the jam jar all the way now, Dave, so let’s be strong. Can you be strong?” Still keeping the gun pointed at Shaw, she stepped to her husband and wiped her right hand on his and his sleeve. She’d be transferring the GSR, gunshot residue, to him, to make the police believe he’d been the shooter. It was the first thing they look for.
Cable TV, again.
Goodwin gasped, “But how... How could you do this?”
“Because,” Shaw said, “the script called for Ron to kill the man he thought was her lover, to make it credible.”
Evelyn Fontaine was clearly growing impatient. “Let’s get this over with, somebody might’ve heard the shot.”
Layering... The whole plot was like one of her paintings, the truth hidden, distorted, under coats and coats of pigment. Russian nesting dolls came to mind.
She now crouched once more, getting into a position from which to shoot Shaw.
Well, can’t wait any longer, Shaw thought. He spoke firmly. “David Goodwin and Evelyn Fontaine have just murdered Jason Barnes and are about to murder Ronald Matthews in the Samsons’ wheelwright building outside of Muncie, Indiana. Off Route 83. The time is approximately three p.m. on August thirty-first.” He didn’t mention himself as the other potential victim, not wanting to clutter the narrative.
With quick glances toward each other, the two remained motionless, a frown weighing down Goodwin’s face, while Evelyn’s was wary.
Shaw explained, “I knew before we got here this was a setup.”
“Bullshit,” she snapped.
“Goodwin, you told me you hadn’t spoken to Evelyn since June but you also knew she and Jason were going to the retreat in Muncie.” His eyes swung from Goodwin to Fontaine. “If she met Jason only a month ago, in Schaumburg, how could you know about him?”
Fontaine blinked and turned toward Goodwin, who looked stricken. “You did what?” she raged. “Why did you say anything about Jason?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
Shaw said, “I knew something seemed off. Felt like I was being played. Those texts I sent? And the picture of the factory? They went to my private investigator on the East Coast, who forwarded everything to the county sheriff here. They’re on their way now.”
Goodwin muttered, “Oh, Jesus. What’ve I done?”
“Shut up,” Fontaine snarled.
“We’re screwed,” Goodwin whispered. “Don’t you understand that?”
“He’s bluffing.” To Shaw: “Let me see your goddamn phone. Unlock it and give it to Dave. I want to see the texts. Now!”
Shaw, eyes on the Glock, carefully offered the unit to Goodwin, as Fontaine stepped to the side and raised the gun toward Shaw’s head, moving closer, though still keeping a safe distance from him.
Goodwin eased in. “Are you covering him?”
“Get the damn phone.”
Then both Fontaine and Goodwin cocked their heads when sirens wailed in the distance.
That tiny distraction was enough for Shaw. He grabbed Goodwin’s arm and spun him around, a shield, then charged forward. Goodwin was a big man but weak; he didn’t resist. Together, they plowed into Fontaine. The gun discharged, the slug hitting the wall above them, sending a faint rain of red brick granules down upon them.
In a smooth sweep, Shaw yanked the gun from the woman’s hand. He backed quickly away, dropped the magazine a few inches, to make sure there were rounds in the weapon, and snapped it back into place. He then lifted the black, boxy pistol toward them.
Shaw blinked as an unearthly wailing scream poured from Fontaine’s throat. “No, no, no!” The petite woman had dropped to her knees on the floor, rocking back and forth hysterically.
He supposed that the bullet had in fact struck her. Keeping the muzzle aimed her way, he carefully circled so he could find the wound and assess how serious it was. But he saw no blood.
She looked up at him, and her violet eyes were those of the rabid wild dog that had made its way onto the Compound one March. Fontaine held her hand up toward him and raged, “My finger! Look what you did!” It was the index digit of her right hand, which had been on the trigger.
Her painting hand.
“You broke it,” she howled. “You broke it, you broke it, you broke it...”
“I surely do apologize, sir,” the sheriff was saying.
He was a solid, calm man of about fifty, and, with an impressive mustache, he looked like a Texas Ranger, or at least what central casting thought a Texas Ranger should look like (Shaw enjoyed Westerns too, in addition to noir).
They were in the parking lot of the wheelwright factory.
Samsons’ Manufacturing...
Did the plural apostrophe signify father and offspring? Or siblings, à la the Ball Brothers? Whatever the family configuration, Shaw bet that never in a million years would they have guessed that their products would morph into the thousand-dollar Pirellis mounted on the Mercedes-AMG, presently quarantined by yellow police tape in the front drive of their establishment.
Shaw asked why the apology.
“We didn’t get here as timely as we hoped. Our dispatcher got your private eye’s call? With the information about the old Samson place? Delia’s a peach, she is. Could be a deputy herself but for the joints. Arthritis. So anyways. The units she called were the nearest, but they weren’t near, if you see what I’m saying. They were off on some wild-gander chase, a meth deal gone bad. I say ‘gander’ because the granddaughter always correcting. Have to be attentive to such things nowadays.”
He then grew somber. “Weren’t in time for that poor fellow, Barnes. He just walked in, wrong place, wrong time, hmm?”
“No. Evelyn asked him back, knowing she was going to kill him. It was part of her plan.”
“My word.”
“How’s Ron?” Shaw asked.
Matthews was presently in the back of an ambulance parked at the other end of the lot.
“That man is not a happy one, I will tell you. Learning his pretty little love puppy was going to kill him? But physically he’ll be right as a turkey that can still gobble on Black Friday... So, Shaw, I looked into you. Seems you’ve done this sort of thing before. What’re your thoughts? She wanted to kill him ’cause Matthews was abusive? I checked and didn’t find a single report.”
“No. She spun that story to trick Goodwin and Barnes into helping. And to get me to trust her. Femmes fatales generally seduce with sex; she went for sympathy.” He then offered a hypothesis about the insurance. “All she cared about, more than anything else, was painting. The rules didn’t apply when it came to that.”
He told the sheriff about the juvie cases — stealing art supplies, when she was a kid.
“Anything to sustain her. Living with Ron was okay when he was rich. But Matthews’ company was going under. No more trips to Paris. She hated working even part-time and he’d probably want her to go to work full. That’d interfere with her vision.”