“Please, no!”
The needle turned directly toward the doctor and started toward his chest.
“No!”
Then, with a skill that came from years of careful observation, Michael eased the needle deep into the doctor’s skin and injected the drug.
From Dr. Richard’s lips came a mournful wail, which seemed not to be a cry of pain but appeared to come rather from a deeper sort of anguish-the sound perhaps of a man realizing that the last image in his thoughts as he died would be the look of betrayal upon the face of someone that he had, in a way, loved.
“How far away was he?” Portia asked.
“Fredericks. It’s only eight or nine miles from here. But the roads’re bound to be terrible.”
They had changed clothes and shared the hair dryer. Lis stood in the kitchen window and saw, through the rain, a dot of light reflecting on the lake, a mile away. The house of their closest neighbor-a couple Owen and Lis knew casually. They were young, married only six months. The woman was very much a hausfrau and on several occasions had talked to Lis breathlessly and with queasy candor about wifedom. She asked many questions and watched with squinting eyes, her elbows on a vinyl place mat, as Lis awkwardly dished out advice about relationships. For heaven’s sake, Lis thought, how would I know if you should have sex with your husband even if you’ve got the flu? As if there were rules about such things.
“You’re all packed?” Portia asked.
“Packed? Nightgown, toothbrush, underwear. It’ll be about a six-hour stay. God, what I want is a hot bath. They might even catch him before Owen gets here. Hey, I need a drink. Brandy?”
“Tastes like soap.”
“Acquired taste, granted. Grand Marnier?”
“More my style.”
Lis poured two glasses and wandered into the doorway of the greenhouse.
“We make a good dam. It’s still holding.”
A huge burst of wind shook the windows. It howled through the open vents, loud enough to obscure conversation. The leafless trees whipped back and forth and whitecaps broke on the surface of the lake. Lis said that she’d never seen the water this turbulent. A huge streak of lightning split the sky to the west and the floor seemed to drop beneath their feet when the thunder rolled over the house.
“Let’s retreat. To the living room?”
Lis was happy to agree.
They sat in silence for a moment. Lis avoided her sister’s eyes and glanced instead at a cluster of photographs on the end table. Pictures from their childhoods: Portia, sassy and sexy. Lis, studious and vigilant and, well, plain. Tall, stern Andrew, complete with anachronistic mustache and ubiquitous white shirt. And gracious Mother with her uplifted matriarchal jaw, her eyes commanding everyone except her husband, in whose presence she was timid.
“Portia,” Lis said slowly, eyes now on the frames, not the photographs, “I’d like to talk to you about something.”
Her sister looked toward her. “The nursery business?”
“No,” Lis finally answered. “It’s about Indian Leap.
What happened there. Between us, I mean. Not the murder. You don’t want to talk about it, I know. But will you just listen to what I have to say?”
Portia was silent. She licked the sweet liquor from the rim of her glass and waited.
Lis sighed. “I never wanted to see you again after that day.”
“You must’ve figured that was how I felt too. Since we haven’t seen each other.”
“I’ve felt so guilty.”
“I don’t want an apology.”
“Hitting you, saying the things I said… I was out of control. I’ve never been that way before. Never in my life. I was everything I always prayed I’d never be.”
“You had a good teacher.” Portia tapped the photo of their father. “Got your right hook from him, it felt like.”
Lis didn’t smile; she felt ill with shame and anger. She looked now for signs of forgiveness, softening. But Portia merely sat hugging her glass and staring-almost bored, it seemed-into the greenhouse. The eerie moaning of the wind continued.
Absently, Lis said, “I went to the Dairy Queen the other day. Remember it?”
“They’re still around? I haven’t been inside one for years.”
“No, remember. There is no inside.”
“That’s right. Sure.”
Lis pictured them as young girls, with their Dutch bodyguard Jolande, buying the soft vanilla cones at a little screen window and sitting on a sticky picnic bench beside the parking lot. During the day bees hovered, and at night moths and beetles died fast, brilliant deaths as they flew into the mesmerizing purple glow of the bug zapper.
“We’d get the cherry coatings,” the younger sister squinted as she recalled.
“And the ice cream was always melting and running down the cone. It was always a race-trying to lick it off before it got to our hands.”
“Sure, I remember.”
They fell silent, as the whine from the wind grew more piercing. Lis walked to the greenhouse and closed the vent tightly. The sound waned but didn’t cease completely. When she returned she said, “I never mentioned it to you, Portia, but I had an affair last spring, and there are some things I have to tell you about it.”
He cruises at seventy miles an hour, the tach on the dash edging red on the uphill grades, the engine a tortured whine. Owen Atcheson passes the Sav-Mor, now closed, the plate glass taped with huge X’s, as if instead of a fall storm a hurricane is anticipated. Then he speeds past a housing development, and beyond that, the Ford dealership, the blue and red sign turning slowly in the sky like a lighthouse beacon.
Then Route 236 begins to curve through the hills that border Ridgeton-the hills that are also part of the same geologic glitch that, two hours away, rises high above the stone valley of Indian Leap, where Robert Gillespie had died broken and bloody.
Owen slows to take these turns then speeds again to fifty, hurrying through the red light at the intersection of 116. The road now rises along the crest of a long hill and he catches a glimpse of water thirty feet below him, off to the right. From the dark creek rise the spindly black legs of the old Boston, Hartford & New York railroad trestle. He slows for the road’s only hairpin turn and lifts his foot off the brake to accelerate onto the long straightaway that will take him into downtown Ridgeton.
The beige Subaru seems to drift leisurely from the cleft of bushes where it was hidden, pointed nose out. Owen sees, however, that the car’s rear wheels spin furiously, shooting mud and water behind them, and the import is actually moving at a good clip. In the instant before the huge hollow bang, he thinks he might escape, so close do the vehicles approach without striking. Then the car hits the Cherokee solidly amidships with a terrible jolt that twists Owen’s neck badly. Pain explodes in his face with a burst of yellow light.
The Subaru stops short of the cliff ’s edge as the truck eases over the side. It teeters for what seems an eternity, giving Owen Atcheson plenty of time to see the face of Michael Hrubek, a mere six feet away. He’s grinning madly, pounding on the wheel, and shouting as he tries frantically, it seems, to make himself heard. Owen stares back but never does figure out what the message might be because just then the truck lurches forward and starts its plunge toward the creek far below.
4. The Blossoms of Sin
26
Portia laughed shortly and asked with astonishment, “You? An affair?”
The older sister’s eyes were fixed on the sheets of gray rain that cascaded down the windows.
“Me. Wouldn’t’ve guessed, would you?”
There, Lis thought. I’ve done it. The first time I’ve confessed. To anyone. There’s lightning nearby but so far it hasn’t struck me dead.