Jumbee, she thought. Smiling evil.
The gale outside flung sheets of water at the house. The loose shutter chattered like a jackhammer until the wind slackened again.
Tanner said, “Going to be a long wet night.” He made a noisy yawning sound. “Where do you sleep, Shea?”
The question sent a spasm through her body.
“Your bedroom — where is it?”
Oh God. “Why?”
“I told you, it’s going to be a long night. And I’m tired and my foot hurts and I want to lie down. But I don’t want to lie down alone. We might as well start getting to know each other the best way there is.”
No, she thought. No, no, no.
“Well, Shea? Lead the way.”
No, she thought again. But her legs worked as if with a will of their own, carried her back to the table. Tanner sat forward as she drew abreast of him, started to lift himself out of the chair.
She threw the mug of hot coffee into his face.
She hadn’t planned to do it,acted without thinking; it was almost as much of a surprise to her as it was to him. He yelled and pawed at his eyes, his body jerking so violently that both he and the chair toppled over sideways. Shea swept the automatic off the table and backed away with it extended at arm’s length.
Tanner kicked the chair away and scrambled unsteadily to his feet. Bright red splotches stained his cheeks where the coffee had scalded him; his eyes were murderous. He took a step toward her, stopped when he realized she was pointing his own weapon at him. She watched him struggle to regain control of himself and the situation.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Shea.”
“Stay where you are.”
“That gun isn’t loaded.”
“It’s loaded. I know guns too.”
“You won’t shoot me.” He took another step.
“I will. Don’t come any closer.”
“No, you won’t. You’re not the type. I can pull the trigger on a person real easy. Have, more than once.” Another step. “But not you. You don’t have what it takes.”
“Please don’t make me shoot you. Please, please don’t.”
“See? You won’t do it because you can’t.”
“Please.”
“You won’t shoot me, Shea.”
On another night, any other night, he would have been right. But on this night—
He lunged at her.
And she shot him.
The impact of the high-caliber bullet brought him up short, as if he had walked into an invisible wall. A look of astonishment spread over his face. He took one last convulsive step before his hands came up to clutch at his chest and his knees buckled.
Shea didn’t see him fall; she turned away. And the hue and the cry of the storm kept her from hearing him hit the floor. When she looked again, after several seconds, he lay face down and unmoving on the tiles. She did not have to go any closer to tell that he was dead.
There was a hollow queasiness in her stomach. Otherwise she felt nothing. She turned again, and there was a blank space of time, and then she found herself sitting on one of the chairs in the living room. She would have wept then but she had no tears. She had cried herself dry on the terrace.
After a while she became aware that she still gripped Tanner’s automatic. She set it down on an end table; hesitated, then picked it up again. The numbness was finally leaving her mind, a swift release that brought her thoughts into sharpening focus. When the wind and rain lulled again she stood, walked slowly down the hall to her bedroom. She steeled herself as she opened the door and turned on the lights.
From where he lay sprawled across the bed, John’s sightless eyes stared up at her. The stain of blood on his bare chest, drying now, gleamed darkly in the lamp glow.
Wild night, mad night.
She hadn’t been through hell just once, she’d been through it twice. First in here and then in the kitchen.
But she hadn’t shot John. She hadn’t. He’d come home at nine, already drunk, and tried to make love to her, and when she denied him he’d slapped her, kept slapping her. After three long hellish years she couldn’t take it anymore, not anymore. She’d managed to get the revolver out of her nightstand drawer... not to shoot him, just as a threat to make him leave her alone. But he’d lunged at her, in almost the same way Tanner had, and they’d struggled, and the gun had gone off. And John Clifford was dead.
She had started to call the police. Hadn’t because she knew they would not believe it was an accident. John was well liked and highly respected on Salt Cay; his public image was untarnished and no one, not even his close friends, believed his second wife’s divorce claim or that he could ever mistreat anyone. She had never really been accepted here — some of the cattier rich women thought she was a gold digger — and she had no friends of her own in whom she could confide. John had seen to that. There were no marks on her body to prove his abuse, either; he’d always been very careful not to leave marks.
The island police would surely have claimed she’d killed him in cold blood. She’d have been arrested and tried and convicted and put in a prison much worse than the one in which she had lived the past three years. The prospect of that was unbearable. It was what had driven her out onto the terrace, to sit and think about the undertow at Windflaw Point. The sea, in those moments, had seemed her only way out.
Now there was another way.
Her revolver lay on the floor where it had fallen. John had given it to her when they were first married, because he was away so much; and he had taught her how to use it. It was one of three handguns he’d bought illegally in Miami.
Shea bent to pick it up. With a corner of the bedsheet she wiped the grip carefully, then did the same to Tanner’s automatic. That gun too, she was certain, would not be registered anywhere.
Wearily she put the automatic in John’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Then she retreated to the kitchen and knelt to place the revolver in Tanner’s hand. The first-aid kit was still on the table; she would use it once more, when she finished talking to the chief constable in Merrywing.
We tried to help Tanner, John and I, she would tell him. And he repaid our kindness by attempting to rob us at gunpoint. John told him we kept money in our bedroom; he took the gun out of the nightstand before I could stop him. They shot each other. John died instantly, but Tanner didn’t believe his wound was as serious as it was. He made me bandage it and then kept me in the kitchen, threatening to kill me too. I managed to catch him off guard and throw coffee in his face. When he tried to come after me the strain aggravated his wound and he collapsed and died.
If this were Miami, or one of the larger Caribbean islands, she could not hope to get away with such a story. But here the native constabulary was unsophisticated and inexperienced because there was so little crime on Salt Cay. They were much more likely to overlook the fact that John had been shot two and a half hours before Harry Tanner. Much more likely, too, to credit a double homicide involving a stranger, particularly when they investigated Tanner’s background, than the accidental shooting of a respected resident who had been abusing his wife. Yes, she might just get away with it. If there was any justice left for her in this world, she would — and one day she’d leave Salt Cay a free woman again.
Out of the depths, she thought as she picked up the phone. Out of the depths...
Bank Job
I was standing beside the tellers’ cages, in the railed-off section where the branch manager’s desk was located, when the knocking began on the bank’s rear door.
Frowning, I looked over in that direction. Now, who the devil could that be? It was four o’clock and the Fairfield branch of the Midland National Bank had been closed for an hour; it seemed unlikely that a customer would arrive at this late time.