"Sure. Morley, you carry this."
We trooped across the hall, past Kaid, averting our eyes. We climbed stairs. I broke away at the third floor and went to Jennifer's room. The door was locked but I had my skeleton key this time. I went through the big room into the sitting room where I'd found her during the night. She was there again, in the same chair, facing the same window. She was asleep. Her face was as untroubled as a baby's.
"Wake up, Jennifer." I shook her shoulder. She jumped.
"What?" She calmed down quickly. "What?" again.
"We're going up to see your father. Come on."
"I don't want to go. You're going to... It'll kill him. I don't want to be there. I couldn't handle it."
"I think you can. And you have to be there. Things won't work out unless you are." I took hold of her hand, led her. She hung back, making me pull her, but she didn't fight me.
The rest were in Stantnor's sitting room, waiting. As soon as Jennifer and I arrived, Peters pushed on. The next room was a private sitting room like the one in Jennifer's suite. We trudged through into the bedroom.
42
The old man looked like a mummy that hadn't gotten the word and kept on breathing. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. Some kind of slime bubbled out and dribbled down his cheek. Every third breath sounded like a death rattle.
We got to work. I collected paintings. Morley planted himself beside the door. Peters wakened the General and sat him up. Cook started feeding the fire.
The old man looked like hell but his eyes were bright when they focused. His mind hadn't deserted him. He saw how grim everybody looked, knew I'd come with my final report.
I told him, "No point you wasting strength talking, General. Or arguing. It's final report time. Won't take long but I warn you, it's worse than you dreamed. I won't make recommendations. I'll give it to you and you can do what you want with it."
His eyes sparked angrily.
I said, "The man you don't recognize is Doctor Doom, a specialist in paranormal activities. He's been a big help. You don't see Wayne because he quit. He left this morning. Chain and Kaid aren't here because they were taken suddenly dead. Like Hawkes and Bradon. By the same hand. Doctor."
Doom started doing his part. I gave him a little time to get rolling. Lips tightened into a colorless prune, Stantnor watched. Only his eyes moved. They weren't filled with gratitude when they turned my way. There was something behind the anger in them, too. He was worried.
I told him, "First we'll talk about who's been trying to kill you."
Doom let out a howl. Everybody jumped. A flash filled the room. I'm no pro but that didn't feel right. "You all right?" I asked.
He gasped, "It's fighting me. But I'll get it here. Stay out of my way and don't bother me."
It took him a few minutes more.
Eleanor materialized at the foot of Stantnor's bed. But not as Eleanor. Not right away. First she did a good Snake Bradon, then a less credible Cutter Hawkes before surrendering to Doom's will. I compared her to the portrait they said Stantnor stared at all the time. It didn't look much like her and nothing like the woman in Bradon's painting.
Stantnor's eyes got huge. He sat up straight. "No!" he squeaked. He threw up an arm to shield his eyes. "No! Get her away!" He started whimpering like a whipped child. "Get her out of here!"
"You said my job was to make you face the truth no matter how unpleasant that truth might be, General. One truth I've uncovered is this. I'm going to enjoy making you face it. The woman you tortured and murdered—"
Jennifer burst out, "He killed her? My mother? It wasn't a doctor?" She staggered.
"Keep her under control, Morley." Morley left the door, moved to support her. She started blubbering. Words dribbled out but none of them made sense.
Stantnor sputtered like he was going to run a bluff. Spittle ran down his chin. He couldn't talk. He was too rattled. He looked like he might have the stroke Jennifer had predicted.
I faced Eleanor. "Go now. Rest. You've done enough. It doesn't become you. Don't darken your soul any more." Our eyes locked. We stared at one another till the others grew restless. I said, "Please?" And wasn't quite sure what I was pleading for.
"She'll rest easy, Mr. Garrett," Doom said, gently. "That's a promise."
"Turn her loose, then. She doesn't need... " I shut my mouth before I said something that might cause me more trouble than I could handle. I closed my eyes, got myself under control. When I opened them Eleanor was little more than a wraith.
She smiled for me. Good-bye.
"Good-bye."
I took another minute before I faced the old man. He was gasping and wheezing but less distressed. "I brought along a little something for you to remember her by, General. You'll love it." I took down the junk portrait of Eleanor, flipped it away, replaced it with Bradon's masterpiece. "Isn't that better?"
Stantnor stared at it. And the longer he stared the more terrified he became.
He screamed.
I looked at the portrait.
I damned near screamed.
I can't tell you what it was. It hadn't changed in any obvious way but it had changed. It told Eleanor's story. You couldn't look at it and not be crushed by her pain and her fear of the thing that pursued her, that mad shadow that wore the face of a young Stantnor.
I tore my gaze away just before Doom did it for me. He told me, "You still have work to do." His voice was soft and calm. It reached way down inside me, like the Dead Man's can, and gentled that part of me about to stumble over the brink.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I want him to know he has to spend the rest of his life looking at that."
"Not now. Let's go on."
"You're right. Of course. Peters, get his attention away from the painting for a minute."
Peters turned the old man's head. I watched madness fade from Stantnor's eyes... No, it wasn't madness. Not exactly. He'd just been focused on something far away, that only he could see. On his own vision of hell. He was back now. For a few minutes, at least.
"I have another present for you," I told him. "You'll like this one, too." To make sure he paid attention I turned Eleanor's portrait to the wall. I replaced it with Snake's last portrait of Jennifer. "Your lovely daughter, so like her father."
Jennifer screamed. She threw herself forward. Morley caught her in a painful comealong. She didn't notice the pain.
Cook stopped feeding the fire, elbowed Morley aside, took Jennifer into her arms, took the knife away from her, controlled her, held her, wept over her, murmured, "My baby, my baby. My poor sick baby." Nobody else said anything. Everybody knew. Even the General knew.
"There's why your stable burned. That painting. She sat for Bradon several times. But Snake Bradon had an eye that could see the true soul. Which is probably why he retreated from the world. A man with his eye would see a lot of awful truths.
"I look for truth but this time I didn't see it soon enough. Maybe I didn't want to. Like so many of the darkest evils, this one came in a beautiful package. Maybe the painting of Eleanor preoccupied me too much. Maybe I should have studied this one more closely."
Stantnor interrupted.
"Eight murders, General. Your baby killed eight mostly good men. Four she lured to the swamp on the Melchior place." Once I'd accepted Jennifer as the villain the pieces had fallen together. "Took a while but I finally figured what they had in common. They were all chasers. She pretended she was catchable. She got them out there and killed them and dropped them in. That got her past the stumbling block I came up against whenever I wondered if she might be the killer. How did she move the bodies? I missed the obvious answer, that she got them to move themselves. The heaviest work she ever did was shove Chain off the fourth-floor balcony and drop a suit of armor on Kaid.