Wayne beat Kaid by a floor. He looked at what was left of Chain, at the pieces of rotted corpse, at Chain again. "Man. Man, oh, man. Man." He didn't say anything else till he asked, "What happened?"
I told him. Kaid arrived in time to get it all.
"Man. Man, oh, man." Wayne was scared. For the first time since I arrived I saw one of those people convinced of his own mortality.
"Hell. You're all a hundred thousand richer now."
"Man. I don't care about that. I don't need it. It ain't worth it. I'm out of here soon as it's light enough that nothing can sneak up on me."
"But... "
"Money ain't everything. You can't live it up if you're dead. I'm gone." The man was almost hysterical.
I glanced at Peters. He was preoccupied, though he'd made it to the fountain surround. He hoisted himself up and perched with his misery. He had no attention left for anything else.
Morley was no help. But he couldn't be. He didn't know the people.
I looked at Kaid. He was as pallid as a man could get, as shaken as Wayne, equally eyeball to eyeball with death. It had come home. The field was so narrow, each knew he might be next.
He swallowed about three times, then managed, "The General. Somebody's got to take care of the General."
Wayne snarled, "Let that bastard take care of himself. I'm gone. I ain't dying for his money or for him."
Pain will distract you some, but mine wasn't so all-devouring that I couldn't spend some effort trying to figure out what the hell would happen next. I wondered which of the three was acting and how he'd gotten so good.
I wondered some about Cook, Jennifer, even the old man, and how I could figure one of them for the killer. Or more than one. That was an angle I hadn't given much thought. Maybe there was more than one killer. That would take care of alibis.
And my ivory lover. What of her? The mystery woman suddenly looked like a top bet for the villain.
Who the hell was she?
I plunked myself down on the fountain surround, as nimble as a quadraplegic dwarf. Kaid and Wayne came out of shock enough to start thinking and doing. Kaid went to the kitchen, got some big burlap sacks. He and Wayne stuffed them with pieces of draug and tied them shut. They gagged while they worked. My cold was that much of a blessing. I didn't have to take the smell.
Morley was three feet away. I asked, "How you doing?"
"Be running windsprints in the morning." He grimaced, spat on the floor, winced again as he leaned to look at it.
"What?"
"Wanted to see if I was spitting blood."
"Come on. You rolled with it."
He flashed me a down under smile. He was putting on a show. He wanted folks to think he was hurt worse than he was. Might be an edge for him later.
I shut my mouth.
Peters managed to say, "What now, Garrett?"
"I don't know."
"How do we stop this before we're all dead?"
"I don't know that, either. Unless we just scatter."
"In which case the killer wins by default. Wayne walks tomorrow, it's the same as if he got killed."
Morley said, "Makes your job easier, Garrett." He did a grimace. He was overacting.
"Eh?" I was at top form.
"Shortens the list by another name."
Black Pete grunted out, "Garrett. How're you going to catch him?"
Him? I wasn't so sure now. If Wayne walked and Peters was clean, the crowd was so small I'd have to lynch Kaid. But I thought Kaid was too old and feeble to have done all the killer had.
"I don't have a clue, Sarge. Don't press me. You people know each other better than I know you. You tell me who it is."
"Shit. It isn't anybody. Logically. One way or another you can discard everybody. Except maybe your phantom blonde, that nobody sees but you."
"I saw her," Morley said. I looked at him, puzzled. Was he lending moral support?
Hadn't he said something about seeing her last night? Or was that the other Morley?
I'd forgotten that. The thing that could be somebody else. Probably the spook that the doctor was sure was here.
It didn't get any easier.
"Your picture," Morley whispered.
I frowned.
"Get it and find out who she is. Besides a hot tumble."
Maybe he was right. Maybe. I wanted to say the hell with it for now. We were out of the woods for a while. That draug had been cared for. The killer wasn't likely to make another move for a while. I hurt everywhere. I just wanted to slither upstairs and finish what I'd started before I'd been interrupted.
But I'd put off seeing Bradon for a few minutes and look what that had cost. Not just Snake but Chain. Not to mention the stable, those paintings, and however many horses had vanished into the sunset because there was no one to round them up.
I got my feet under me. "Peters. Any rain gear handy?"
Morley got up, too. He scrunched over, held his side with his left arm.
"Rain gear? What the hell you need to go outside for?"
"Got to get something while it's still there."
He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. Probably right, I thought. "To your left at the end over there, through that arch. The old guest restrooms." He still wasn't talking in big gobbling chunks.
Morley and I went to the arch, which was barely five feet wide. A crack of a doorway for this place. It opened on an alcove, eight by eight. There was a door in front of me and one to my left. "Check that one," I told Morley, and opened the one in front of me.
Mine was the women's, the only pissoir I'd seen in the house. I hadn't noticed any plumbing downstairs. Maybe it wasn't there anymore. The place was dried up, used only for storage.
There were no raincoats.
I went to check on Morley.
His room was the men's. Surprise, surprise. One wall was all marble that fell to a trough. The flush pipe whence water ran, at eye level, had rusted out. I spied the rain gear but not Morley. "Where are you?"
"Here." His voice came from beyond a copse of brooms and mops and whatnot in the left-hand rear corner. He'd found another movable panel. He was halfway up the narrow stairway behind it.
"We can check it out later." I spied a lantern amongst the junk on the marble four-holer. It smelled like it had been used in the modern era. When Morley came down I was getting it lighted.
Morley said, "If there weren't people hanging around, you'd think the place had been abandoned for twenty years."
"Yeah." I shrugged into an oilcloth coat so big it hung long on me. "Let's get with it." While Morley tried to find something smaller than a circus tent, I snapped up a few extras to wrap Bradon's artwork. We put on hats and dashed out into the storm.
Actually, we stumbled. I wasn't getting any friskier. Neither was Morley. I had to spend most of my energy keeping the lantern from blowing out.
There was a brisk wind blowing, throwing barrels of water around. It came from every direction but up. The thunder banged away. Lightning, over the city, carried on like a battle between hordes of stormwardens. We reached the barn in spite of all.
"Thank heaven we found rain gear," Morley said. "We might have gotten soaked."
Sarky bastard. I was wet to the skin. I rooted through the place where I'd squirreled the paintings. "Damn me! Something's gone right."
"What?"
"They're still here."
"Watch out for a booby trap, then."
I almost took him seriously. That's the way my luck runs.
I shook the water off the extra coats. Morley held the lantern and cursed and dodged bats. "Those coats aren't going to be enough. Let me look around." He scurried off, leaving me halfway convinced I'd never see him again.
He came back with a couple of heavy tarps. We wrapped the paintings in two bundles. We took one apiece and slogged into the storm. I got soaked all over again. I had mud up to my knees when we reached the house, but the paintings arrived dry.