"Maybe I was slow because the murders weren't the kind you associate with women. I just didn't face the fact that in a house full of Marines everybody might think like Marines and be straightforward and bloody. Who'd picture a woman being daring enough to take on a trained commando with a Kef sidhe strangler's cord?"
I looked at Jennifer, thought of our stroll to the graveyard. She'd planned to kill me out there, I knew now. I'd offered her an unexpected moment of kindness. That had saved my life and had cost her her chance to get away with everything.
"I know who and how. But I sure as hell don't understand why."
She cracked. She laughed and wept and talked a yard a second and never made a lick of sense. It seemed to have to do with a fear that, if there were any heirs but her and Cook, parts of the estate would get sold off and once it was dismembered she'd be forced to leave for that deadly world she'd visited only once, when she was fourteen.
I was wrong about one thing. She hadn't committed eight murders. She'd committed eleven. She'd done in the three men whose deaths had seemed natural or accidental. She admitted it. She bragged about it. She laughed because she'd made fools of everybody till now.
Stantnor stared at her the whole time, aghast. I knew what he was thinking. What had he done to deserve this?
I started to tell him.
"Garrett!" Morley took hold of my arm.
"What?"
"It's time to go. The job's done."
Doom had gone already, his part complete, Eleanor laid to rest. Cook was trying to comfort and control Jennifer and to work out some separate peace with herself. The girl wasn't the daughter of her flesh, but... Stantnor had become fixated on his daughter's portrait, seeing deeper than anyone but Bradon had. Maybe seeing the hand he'd had in creating a monster. I had no pity for him. I did try to find it. It just wasn't there.
Then he had one of his fits.
This one went on and on and on.
"Garrett. It's time to go."
The old man was dying. Rough. Morley didn't want to stay for the show.
Peters just stood there, numb, doing nothing. He didn't know what to do. I did pity him.
I shook off the hold emotion had on me. I told Morley, "Stantnor owes me. I spent my whole fee and then some getting him his answers. It don't look like he'll hang around to be billed."
He looked at me weird. That kind of cold remark wasn't in character. "Don't," he said, though he had no idea what I was going to do. "Let's just go. Forget it. I won't charge you for my time."
"No." I snagged the painting of Eleanor. "My fee. An original Bradon." The General didn't argue. He was busy dying. I looked at Peters. He just shrugged. He didn't care.
Morley snapped, "Garrett!" He was sure I was going to do something I'd regret.
"Wait a damned minute!" I still had a responsibility here. "Cook, what're you going to do?"
She looked at me like I'd asked the dumbest question possible. "What I always done, boy. Look after the place."
"Get hold of me if I can do anything." Then I followed Morley. I didn't think another thought about the old man. If there'd been a doctor outside who could have saved him, I doubt it would have occurred to me to mention his distress.
Peters was at the vestibule door when Morley and I got there, carrying paintings and my stuff. He was staring at the great hall the way I'd stared at Bradon's painting of the swamp and hanged man. He had a shovel in one hand. He had graves to dig. I wondered if anybody would bother giving Stantnor a marker. He said, "I don't think I can say thanks, Garrett. You came when I called, but I don't think I'd have visited you if I'd known—"
"I wouldn't have come if I'd known. We're even. What're you going to do?"
"Bury the dead, then go somewhere. Maybe back into the corps. They'll need veterans with Mooncalled running amok. And it's all I know, anyway."
"Yeah. Good luck. See you again someday, Sarge."
"Sure." We both knew we'd never see one another again.
A terrible scream came from upstairs. It went on and on till it seemed no human throat could have produced it. We all looked up. Peters said, "I guess he's dead." He said it with a complete lack of passion.
The scream came again. Now it was filled with mad rage. Cook boomed, "Miss Jenny, you come back here!"
The girl had cracked completely. She flew out of the fourth-floor hallway carrying a dagger, screaming. Shocked, I realized she was yelling my name.
"Get moving, Garrett," Morley said. He'd seen berserkers before. Even a ninety-five-pound woman could tear me apart.
She was so far out of her mind, she didn't know where she was. Realization hit her too late. She hit the balcony rail full speed.
The heroic knight caught her in his lap. Broken, she dribbled down off him, wound up at one of the dragon's feet. She looked like the monster's prey. The hero had come to her rescue moments too late.
But this hero had been way too late to save anybody.
I turned and walked. Morley stayed behind me, just in case I did some damnfool thing like try to go back.
Morley and I didn't talk much on the way home. Once I muttered something about finding another line of work, and he just told me not to be a damned fool. I asked if he'd filled his pockets while he was there, or planned to drop back in some midnight. Usually if I ask something like that he just looks at me like he hasn't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about.
"I wouldn't take anything out of that place if you paid me, Garrett. Not if you begged me. There's a darkness in every stone, every thing, in there."
We didn't talk again till we were coming up Macunado Street toward my house. Then he said, "Go in there and get roaring drunk. Falling down, puking drunk. Get the poison out."
"That's the best idea you've had in years."
43
Dean let me in. He looked older and leaner, though it'd been only a few days. "Mr. Garrett. We were concerned, not hearing from you for so long."
"We?" I grumbled. He was going to fuss over me.
"Him." He jerked his head toward the Dead Man's room. "He's been awake since you left. Expecting you to ask for help."
"I handled this one alone." Boy, did I handle it.
"Oh." He'd gotten the sense of my mood. "Guess I'd better draw one."
"I might drink a whole barrel."
"That bad?"
"Worse. Find me a hammer, too." I eased into my office, checked the spot where I meant to hang Eleanor.
Dean went. He moved with a swiftness I should remember next time he went at his customary snail's pace. He was back with a beer, a hammer, and a cup of nails in less than a minute. I drained the beer mug. "More."
"I'll start a meal, too. You look like you could use one."
Old sneak. Going to get something on my stomach before I started my serious drinking. "I did miss your cooking where I was." I drove a nail into the wall. Dean brought beery reinforcements before I unwrapped Eleanor. This time he brought a pitcher as well as a mug.
I unwrapped the lady and hung her, stepped back.
It wasn't the same picture.
Well, yes, it was. But something had changed. The intensity, the passion, the horror weren't there. But it looked the same. Except Eleanor seemed to be smiling. She seemed to be running to something instead of from something.
No. It was the same. Nothing had changed but me. I turned my back on it. Snake Bradon hadn't been that great a painter.