From a pocket of his old frock coat Fenway took a silver watch, which he snapped open. He placed it on the bed. Both of them stared at the black hands. Ten past nine. The bigger hand ticked over a notch. One more minute gone.
Ashton stood behind him, expertly kneading his tight neck and shoulders. "Now just don't worry. We'll pull it off, slick as anything. Partners as smart as we are, no one can stop us."
Except possibly Luis, who helped himself to another drink so noisily that Ashton and Fenway heard the bottle clinking against the glass.
As time ran away from them, their luck appeared to do a miraculous turnabout. Luis began to serenade himself in a loud tuneless baritone. Señora Vasquez-Reilly said, "No me fastidies," but he kept right on. Five minutes later — nine minutes before ten, the hour at which the señora would ascend the stairs and order Will out — the rainstorm intensified, complete with heavy rolls of thunder.
"We're going to make it, Will. We're going to do it — now." Ashton tied her lacy mantilla under her chin, a wispy scarf, but better than nothing. Pressing the closed case into his hand, she took the loaded Allen and opened the door. She examined the dim, rancid hall, lit by a single stubby candle in a tin sconce.
The hall stretched straight back to the dark rear stairs, empty. Ashton's breath hissed in and out as she edged forward. She whispered, with her mouth against his ear, "Step easy. Parts of the floor squeak if you come down hard."
With almost exaggerated tiptoe steps, they crept along the hall past the first closed door. Ashton heard the girl inside snoring. Then, on the left, they passed the second door, where they heard no sound at all from Rosa.
Ashton risked going faster on the stairs. It worked until she reached the second step from the top, and Fenway put his weight down on the first one, which gave off a sound like a cat with its tail twisted.
The rain had slackened. The sound carried. And their luck reversed completely again.
Rosa's door opened. Naked, she stepped into the hall, carrying her slops jar. Because of the stair noise, she immediately looked to the left — and saw them.
Her scream probably carried all the way to Fort Marcy. "¡Señora! ¡Señora! ¡La puta Brett, se huye!"
"That's it," Ashton cried, grabbing Fenway's lapels. "Go fast, lover."
She went plunging down the risers two at a time, and if she had missed one by chance, if she'd fallen, she'd have broken her neck.
As if to tease the fugitives along with a little good fortune now that they'd been discovered, Ashton and her partner made it to the storeroom without so much as a stumble. Rosa, however, kept howling, and the instant Ashton started to slip through the maze of old broken crates, the senora's voice joined in, exhorting Luis to hurry.
The door from the cantina opened. An amber rectangle of light laid itself across the floor, revealing the fugitives near the back door.
Luis charged toward them. Ashton fired the pepperbox.
Through the smoke, she saw Luis fall to one side. Then she saw the señora, in the cantina, wiping blood from her cheek. Blood from flying splinters; Ashton's ball had hit the frame of the door, and Luis had merely taken a dive to save himself.
"Come on, Will," Ashton cried, yanking the back door wide and jumping out into the mud and rain.
Panting, Fenway followed. He pushed her to the left and, in doing so, gave her kneecap a ferocious whack with his sample case. She staggered, almost fell. Fenway caught her elbow and guided her. "Not far. That little shed. Here we are, here."
She smelled and heard the fretful animals. Luis appeared at the back door, pouring out a torrent of profanity. He lunged into the open and darted after them, only to pitch over when his right foot slipped in the mud. The way he yelled as he went down told Ashton he'd broken or torn something.
He sprawled on his side, groping toward the fugitives with his left hand. A faint glare of lightning showed his mud-slimed face. From the door, the señora screamed, "Levántate, Luis. Maldita seas. Levántate y síguelos."
"No puedo, puta, me pasa algo a la pierna."
"Mount up, for Lord's sake," Fenway wailed. He was already in the saddle, clutching the handle of his sample case. Ashton seemed to spend an eternity in the few seconds she stared at the tableau behind the cantina: the señora standing there demanding that Luis get up, Luis groping toward them with his outstretched hand while his pained face said he couldn't.
In that momentary eternity, a vivid cavalcade of large and small slurs, insults, unkindnesses passed through Ashton's mind. The señora and Luis were equal offenders, but Luis was the nearer. She stepped two paces toward him, aimed the pepperbox with her arm rigid, and put a ball into his head.
They clattered across the empty central plaza, rain-washed and gleaming. Ashton's horse led. She'd pulled her skirt up between her thighs and rode astride, bent low, watching for obstacles.
From behind, Fenway cried, "Why'd you shoot that man? You didn't have to shoot him, he was down."
"Luis abused me. I hated him," she screamed over her shoulder. Ahead, a pair of soldiers from the fort stepped into her path, rubber ponchos shining in the lightning flashes. One pulled the other back at the last moment; both fell.
As Fenway galloped, the lightning revealed deep dismay on his rain-pelted face. He knew the little Carolina tart was stone-hearted, but he'd never imagined she would go so far as to slay a helpless man. What kind of creature had he hooked up with anyway? Nearly sick from excitement and the motion of the horse, he no longer felt liberated by their escape. Instead, he was gripped by a queasy sense of entrapment.
Accustomed to horses since childhood, Ashton rode expertly, head down over the nag's neck, her only guidance the occasional feeble flare of the lightning. She rode as if hell was behind her and nothing ahead would stop her, and her partner felt dragged along, captured, and pulled by her incredible force of will.
He heard her cry, "We'll make it, honey. We'll outrun those greaser dogs. Keep riding!"
He might indeed outrun any pursuit, he thought as the horse carried him over the slick road like a cork in a typhoon sea, but he doubted he could ever outrun her. It was too late; she'd hooked him.
And she'd committed murder.
With his assistance.
The deputy marshal for the territory and the commandant of Fort Marcy together questioned Señora Vasquez-Reilly, who said to them:
"Of course I can tell you who murdered my sweet, innocent brother-in-law. I can describe her to perfection. I always doubted that she gave me her real name. So whether you ever catch her is up to you."
16
In Richmond, a young doctor made the rounds of the Almshouse wards guided by the matron, Mrs. Pember. The doctor was new, a volunteer, like the others who tended these sad lumps of human refuse.
Here and there a patient gave him a vacant glance, but most paid no attention. One man crouched beside his cot, exploring an invisible wall with the tips of his fingers. Another held a lively silent conversation with unseen listeners. A third sat with his arms crossed and tucked under, straitjacket fashion, weeping without a sound.
The doctor dictated notes to the matron as he proceeded from cot to cot. Near the cot at the end, a man sat hunched on a packing box by an open window. Even this late in the year, smoke still drifted from the burned sections of the city, hazing the thin autumn sunshine.
The man on the packing box was staring out the window, southeast, toward the monuments in the city's Jewish Burying Ground, which was separate from Shockoe Cemetery. His loathing was evident. With her voice lowered, Mrs. Pember said, "Found unconscious in front of the State House, some weeks ago."