Even in defeat, Tug Parnell did not capitulate. There was no hint of remorse. No germ of conscience to help Tug see the light, see his error, and come to Jesus. Ben recognized the look in Tug’s face. It was not that this jackal was simply inured to mayhem, or even business-like about it. Busted up as he was, Tug was proud. Proud of his day’s work. Proud of his claim to a little piece of hell on earth. For Tug, this was not a necessary evil, not a means to an end. It was a calling. Ben felt his pulse shoot up. A detached part of his brain witnessed his vision iris down into a killing focus, and become an etched telescopic gun sight, its optics tinted blood red. Instead of a gun, Ben reached for his knife.
Then something behind him moved. A soft thump. Ben looked, but the living room remained empty, foul and silent as death.
That’s when Tug tried to squirm away.
Ben walloped him down with a double-fisted hammer. Tug was either out cold or faking. No time to figure out which. One of Tug’s feet was still cocked on the bottom step.
Ben stood, stepped across another line within himself, and stamped down hard. Tug screamed again. So he had been playing possum. Now he was cursing Ben’s ancestry, dooming his descendants, and suggesting acts that defied even the limber anatomy of a Cirque du Soleil performer. So be it. With that bad leg, at least ol’ Tug wouldn’t be sneaking up behind anybody today.
Ben went through the living room into the small den. Found a 9mm Beretta on an end table by the loveseat. Probably Tug’s. No sign of Charlene.
The soft thump again. Ben could not pinpoint its origin behind the windy creaks and shudders of the old house, and Tug’s curses. He grabbed the Beretta, flipped off the safety. There was already a round in the chamber. He cleared the hallway. Next stop: the laundry room. Nobody was there either.
It had been a few minutes since Tug screamed, and no one had come to help him, so Ben sped things up. Shouted into the emptiness. “Hello!”
Then Ben noticed the small pool of blood spreading from under the laundry closet door. Standing well to one side, Ben opened the door an inch. A pale white hand on the floor caught the light. He opened the door.
There was Charlene, stuffed in next to the wicker laundry hamper. She sat fetal on her haunches. A small bullet entry wound in her chest, powder burn tattooing meant close range. Charlene’s eyes were open, full of terror. Glazed with tears. She was looking up at Ben, panting. Not recognizing him. She looked like Satan’s chew-toy.
“Charlene! It’s me, Ben Blackshaw. Your neighbor, Ben.”
Charlene’s face eased. She blinked slowly. Tears flowed into the wrinkles of her haggard face. Ben kneeled beside her. Carefully leaning her forward, he confirmed there was no gaping exit wound in her back.
Tug Parnell laughed, and spewed filth from the next room. He encouraged Ben to admire a job well done, and to take a turn with Charlene himself.
Ignoring Tug, Ben gently uncurled Charlene from the confined space so she could lie flat. He inverted the laundry basket, elevated her feet with it. Thready pulse. Charlene’s breathing was shallow, labored. Close to agonal. Ben pulled his blowout kit from his leg pocket and dressed the wound. He grabbed towels from the closet shelves above, pressed one over the trauma dressing. For her other hurts, Ben felt helpless to care for her. He could only grab more towels. And finally a blanket from the top shelf to cover her.
“Hang on for me, Charlene. I’m going to your phone, okay? You need a hospital. I’ll get a helo out here.”
The State Police flew Medevac for all of Maryland. Trooper Four out of Salisbury could scramble a Dauphin helicopter with paramedics to the Smith Island pad at one hundred sixty-five knots; under twenty minutes. Charlene could be in Peninsula Medical Center in less than an hour, if shock did not claim her first.
She slowly edged her feeble hand onto Ben’s hand. Her voice no more than a whisper. Ben had trouble understanding her. She slurred like a deaf woman. “No damn good. Stay.”
“I’ll come right back, I swear. You need help, ma’am.”
Charlene frowned. Moved her head, no. “Hiram. Using him. The boat. Coming for you. And LuAnna. No point.”
“I’ll find him for you.” Ben was lying and Charlene knew it. Hiram had to be dead. And Chalk somehow knew about LuAnna, and was looking for her. Like a troika of wild horses, rage, horror, and pain dragged him in three directions at once. If Chalk could do this to Hiram and Charlene, how would he use LuAnna?
Charlene squeezed Ben’s hand weakly. Her face showed enormous effort and a hurt from down in her soul. “No calls. No doctor. No police. You do this. You, Ben. No police. S’what your father wanted. You sort this out. You can do it. I know. For us all.”
Ben was stunned. Charlene had somehow heard about his father’s return. Even she knew that something linked to Dick Blackshaw was simmering on Smith Island.
Ben’s duty as a human demanded he get Charlene help. As her friend, things were not so clear. Her wish, her selfless dying wish was that he carry on without regard for her. He’d seen this kind of courage in mortally wounded soldiers. She was sacrificing any hope of survival. For what? For us all, she had said.
Charlene gave Ben a sick smile. “Goddamn picaroon.” Her face relaxed. Her breathing deepened, slowed. Two minutes later Ben could find no trace of her pulse. Not the least warmth of breath. In that time he had found the two house phones, upstairs and down. Both smashed to pieces.
He gently closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 23
Hell, it was already midmorning. Maynard Chalk scanned the Chesapeake toward Smith Island. He could not see it. The storm and the distance obscured his view. Even though he was standing at the top of the fifty-two-foot Point No Point Lighthouse, visibility was down to a quarter mile, and often much less.
Looking directly downward, he saw the Natural Resources Police patrol boat moored to the lighthouse’s foundation, which was a circular iron caisson. Hiram Harris’s Palestrina was also tied there. She showed smoke damage from the decoy oil fire set in an old washtub on the afterdeck.
Hiram Harris was no longer aboard.
Hiram’s skiff also surged beside the Palestrina. Chalk and Bill Slagget had almost drowned crossing to the lighthouse in that little outboard, but by God they had dodged the bay’s mounting growlers like salty old sailors and made it!
The lighthouse’s rusty caisson was footed on the Chesapeake bottom at a depth of twenty-two feet. A two-story brick octagon design, measuring eleven feet on a side, topped the caisson. Capping the brick octagon was a wood frame watch room with four dormers and a mansard roof. The two-foot-high, fourth-order, Fresnel lens surmounted all. It was housed in the glass cupola with a grab rail ringing its outside deck. The entire structure canted to the southeast like its cousin in Pisa from a century of Chesapeake ice flows.
Chalk’s people thought he was a genuine madman because of the ferocity with which he conducted his business. They did not realize that wreaking this kind of havoc in the lives of human beings, until this gig anyway, required a sanitary mind. A mind free of clutter. A mind focused like this lighthouse lens, manifold of crystalline contours, yet concerted of purpose.
Chalk had heard all the mustache twirling cuckoo-bird claptrap. Others said he was not a mad genius, just a blowhard whacker with a lucky streak a mile wide. They also said his luck wouldn’t hold forever. In fact, there was growing evidence that his good fortune, like his antipsychotic pills, had already run out, but he would not cave. Not by a long shot. Even though this mission was screwed up as a football bat, he would get through this in great shape. He always did. His growing instability was the linchpin of staying agile.