When I came to I saw Donna bent over me, her red hair draping her face like a cowl. “Boy, Dwyer, thank God, really, thank God,” she said. “I mean, for you being alive and everything.”
Then I felt the goo, right where my hairline has started to recede. At first it felt like paste but of course it was blood and of course it was mine. We were in an attic surrounded by many ancient cardboard boxes and a couple of trunks.
“Would you do me a favor?”
“Sure, Dwyer, what?”
“Put your hand in my back pocket.”
“God, Dwyer, are you joking at a time like this?”
“Right, Donna, my fucking head feels like somebody dropped a cement block on it and I’m telling fucking jokes.”
“Well, God, you don’t have to get so mad. I mean, you’ve got to admit it’s kind of a weird request and all. I mean, right after you regain consciousness.”
“Are you going to do it or not?” I was getting angrier by the moment.
Beneath her breath, she said, “Boy, what an asshole.” Then I threw my weight to the left, lifting my left cheek off the floor, and she squeezed her hand down my pocket and said, “Okay, now I’ve got my hand in your pocket. What should I do next?”
“Is there a handkerchief there?”
“Yeah.”
“Then take it out.”
“All right. I’ve got your handkerchief out.”
“Good. Now hand it to me.”
“Delighted.”
She gave me the handkerchief and I applied it to where the rifle had connected. Then I started the long and painful process of standing up.
I had just gotten my right palm flat on the floor for leverage when she said, “He’s going to come up here and kill us, Dwyer. That’s what he said. David Ashton, I mean.”
“Where are we?”
“He made me help carry you up to the attic. There’s a stairway down, but he’s got the door locked at the bottom and there’s only the one window, the weird little round one up there.”
“Wonderful.”
“What?”
“I said wonderful.”
“Oh.” She was on her knees next to me. She got her arms under my arms in a kind of hammerlock, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t help me get to my feet without much trouble.
I spent two minutes leaning against a dusty wall. I wanted to make sure the dizziness was going to subside at least a bit before I tried walking.
“Boy, Dwyer, you knew it was Ashton all along, didn’t you?”
I just looked at her. “You’re hyperventilating.”
“How can you tell?”
“Some bastard’s down there with a hunting rifle and he’s going to come up here and kill us and you’re just jabbering away.”
“Well, at least you didn’t attribute it to my period.”
“Seriously, will you shut up for a minute and let me think?”
“I can’t help it, Dwyer, I’m scared, and when I’m scared I talk my ass off. I used to drive Chad crazy sometimes.”
“Gosh, that’s hard to believe.”
“All right,” she said, making a silly little gesture with her fingers and mouth, “it’s locked.”
Rain pounded the roof. On the little window it sounded like BBs. I could hear nothing from below. I held out my hand. “How about holding on to me?”
“Where are we going?”
“Down the stairs.”
“But the door’s locked.”
“You forget all the keys I’ve got.”
“Hey, yeah.”
“ ‘Hey, yeah.’ Take my arm, okay?”
She took my arm. My head hurt and I really needed to pee, and I felt feverish from the pain. The steps seemed twenty feet apart. We moved slowly. I could smell sweat from my own pits, or maybe it was from Donna’s pits. We’d spent a long day alternating activity with anxiety, so probably neither of us was up for a fancy dinner party.
At the bottom of the stairs was a door framed by yellow light from the other side. The door was locked.
“What’re we going to do?” Donna whispered.
That was when the gunshot came from downstairs.
“Use one of my basic Boy Scout tools,” I said.
I knelt down and got out my pocket knife and proceeded to have at the door. The house still echoed with the gunshot. My head still hurt from all the abuse of the past day. Donna knelt next to me, looking cute and lost and scared and wet.
“You going to pick it?”
“I’m going to try.”
“I thought you did it with credit cards.”
“Some locks you do with credit cards.”
“But this isn’t one of them?”
“Right.”
“It’s a good thing you were a cop.”
“Please.”
“What?”
“Ssshh.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
So I started. Various second-story men I’d busted during my days on the force would have paid a great deal of money to see this. A great deal.
I started sweating, and my headache got worse. I turned the knife right, I turned the knife left, I wiggled, I waggled, I waffled. The mother still wouldn’t open.
Then Donna said, “Maybe you’re not doing it hard enough.”
“Donna, believe it or not, I know what I’m doing.” I could hear the pissiness in my voice. Pissiness is not my best quality. I tried a patient explanation, but it probably just came out patronizing. “I mean, this isn’t a matter of brute force, it’s a matter of delicacy. Of finding the tumbler and turning it.”
“God, Dwyer, just jam the darn thing in once. What’ve we got to lose?”
So I jammed the darn thing in once, and of course the darn thing (which is to say, the motherfucker) opened right up.
We knelt there looking at the next room as the door swung open.
“Now what?” Donna said.
“Now we sneak down the hall and see what’s going on.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
“Yeah, but you’re better at pretending than I am.” I put out my hand. She felt it twitch.
“Boy, Dwyer, you really are scared.”
We left the room on tiptoes and went down a long, dark hall to the top of the stairs. We huddled in the gloom and listened. There was just the rain. I could smell gunpowder.
“What’re we going to do?” she breathed into her cupped hand against my ear.
“Go downstairs.”
She pantomimed. “Are you crazy?”
I led the way down. With each step I pictured the layout of the large first level. The open living room. The fireplace. The dining room in the left wing. The kitchen in the right. There had been a screened-in back porch, too.
I was almost giddy when we reached the bottom. Fright does that to you sometimes. Blood was running into my eyes.
The living area was well lit and empty. The smell of gunpowder was especially strong there.
“Did he take them somewhere?”
I shrugged. She took my hand. We went into the dining room. We found Sylvia Ashton in the corner.
At first, remembering the gunshot, I thought she was dead. But in the shadows I saw her mad, lovely eyes glint, and as I moved closer, even above the rain, I could hear the soft rhythm of her breathing. Donna knelt on one side of her, I knelt on the other.
“Where did he take her, Sylvia?”
She said nothing.