Eerily calm.
“I took you out of my will and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it,” he said, his voice low and menacing. Now he propped the Barrett on a table, the weight of its long barrel steadied by its own built-in stand, and pointed it directly at his younger daughter. “Care to know why I did it, Big Mitch?”
“Whatever you say, Hangtown,” Mitch replied, his eyes never leaving that big gun.
“He’ll kill us both, Mitch!” Takai cried. “He’s out of his mind.”
“I’ve never been more sane in my life,” Hangtown said. “That evil woman’s trying to trick you, Mitch. It wasn’t me who shot Moose. It was she. She killed Colin’s secretary. And she killed that cop at the gate, too. She wanted you to think I did it so you’d come running to her rescue. She was hoping you’d shoot me down like a rabid dog.”
“I could never do that to you,” Mitch insisted. “Not in a million years.”
“Then she would have done it herself,” Hangtown told him. “With you serving as her sympathetic witness. But I stopped her. And now it’s all over.”
“Put down that gun, Father,” Takai pleaded, her voice quavering. “You’re sick. You need help.”
Hangtown ignored her, staring down at the gun in his hands. “When I gave you that tour of my wine cellar the other night,” he told Mitch, “I discovered that somebody had been using my secret hooch cupboard. Hiding something in there. Something wrapped up in a rug or a blanket.”
“I noticed the outline in the dust,” Mitch recalled. “I remember that you seemed bothered.”
“Damned straight I was. Because there were only three other people on the face of the earth who knew that cupboard existed-Takai, Moose and Big Jim. And because I had no idea what was going on. None. Not until it was too late. Too damned-” He broke off, his voice choking, before he turned his penetrating blue-eyed gaze on his daughter.
Takai had begun to back slowly up against the fireplace, her own eyes wide with fear. She was trapped and she knew it.
“After you murdered your own sister with this thing,” Hangtown said to her, “you stashed it back in the hooch cupboard, knowing the police would never find it there. But I found it in there. That’s when I knew you’d done it, you evil bitch. But I kept quiet-I didn’t want the law to have you. I wanted to take care of you myself, just as soon as the two of us were alone. I wanted the satisfaction of telling you that you were too late. I wanted to see the look on your lovely, twisted face when you realized that you killed Moose for nothing.” He stood there grinning at her crookedly. “It may not be much, but it’s the only satisfaction this old soul has left. That and seeing you die before I do.”
“You bastard,” she snarled at him, the skin stretching tight across the bones of her face. “You mean, sick bastard.”
“Go on and tell him, princess,” Hangtown thundered at her. “Tell Mitch how you killed your own sister.”
“Screw you!”
He fired the Barrett, a colossal, deafening boom that took out a fist-sized hole over the mantel less than a foot from her head.
She shrank back against the fireplace, her teeth chattering.
Mitch stood there frozen, his ears ringing, realizing that there was only one way this could possibly turn out. Takai was going to die-right here, right now. There was no way he could stop it. The only question that remained unanswered was whether he himself was about to die, too.
If only Des knew he was here. If only he’d called her. If only
…
“It’s all about this farm,” Hangtown explained to him, his gnarled, misshapen hands loosely cradling the huge gun. “That’s why she killed her. My old will left it to both of them after I was gone. And my Moose would never, ever sell out her heritage to any pillager like Bruce Leanse. Her I raised right. So Takai took her out, ensuring that she’d come into the whole thing when it’s time for me to take my own dirt nap-or so she thought. I was one step ahead of her, Big Mitch. The more involved she got with Leanse, the more positive I became that she’d try to destroy this place after I’m gone. And I couldn’t let that happen. Not on my watch. I’m responsible for our land. So I’ve taken care of it. Left it to the art academy. They’ll maintain it as a place where young artists will always be able to live and work. The Nature Conservancy will see to the wetlands. And you, my dear sweet princess, get nothing. Not one acre. Not one cent.” The old man’s finger tightened on the trigger once again. “Tell him, girl,” he commanded her. “Tell Mitch how you killed your own sister. Tell him or I’ll put this one right between your treacherous eyes!”
“Fine!” Takai spat at him defiantly. “I’m happy to tell him. I’m proud of what I did. I started planning it when I went out to Southern California this summer to visit the grave of my mother, a sweet, beautiful woman who you tormented until she killed herself, you sadistic bastard. I wanted to blow your head to pieces. I wanted the biggest gun money can buy. I wanted that gun. I bought it at a gun show in Gardena with a fake ID. I bought my Porsche out there, too. That’s how I got the damned gun home. I drove back with it cross-country. Got in some target practice in the Mojave Desert, too, so I’d be good and ready. I bought it with the express purpose of killing you,” Takai said to her father with cold, quiet savagery. “Until, slowly, it began to dawn on me that I’d be letting you off the hook that way-if you were dead, you wouldn’t feel any pain. I wanted you to feel the pain, every day and every night. I wanted you to suffer like I had suffered. There was only one person on the face of the earth who you gave a damn about-Moose. So I killed her.”
Now Mitch understood. Now he knew what Hangtown had meant when he said the past had killed Moose. Payback. It was payback.
“I killed her knowing that you’d spend the last days of your cruel, miserable life in torment,” Takai went on, her eyes feverish. “I killed her knowing that when you did finally die I’d be your sole heir-and could do what I wished with this run-down, weedy old junkyard
… I waited for the right opening. She handed it right to me when she started sneaking out every night to bang Colin. All I had to do was pull the ignition coil on her Land Rover.” Now Takai let out a shrill, mocking laugh. “You taught us all about cars when we were little, remember, Father?”
“And how to hunt,” Hangtown affirmed miserably. “I remember.”
“I knew she wouldn’t want to bother with jumper cables at that time of night. All of that raising and lowering of hoods might wake you or Jim up. Plus she was anxious to be with Colin. And my bedroom light was on. So she asked if she could borrow my car. I gave her my keys and reconnected her coil as soon as she took off. Easy. When the trooper tested it the next day, and it kicked right over, I passed it off as nothing more than quirky Lucas wiring. Totally believable.”
“Just as it was totally believable that someone in Dorset would try to kill you,” Mitch spoke up, the pieces beginning to fall into horrible place now. “You were the one with all the enemies. You were the one noted for her night moves. It was your car. Everyone assumed that you were the intended victim-and that poor Moose simply got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that wasn’t it at all. She was the target all along. Very clever.”
“Not clever,” Hangtown argued. “Evil-through and through.”
Takai didn’t respond, just stood there smirking at her father in ugly triumph.
“Yet you cried for Moose in my arms,” Mitch said to her. “Genuine tears. How were you able to do that?”
“I was crying for my mother,” she answered bitingly. “I’ve cried for her each and every night. But I got even. It took me years, but I got even.”
“And you found yourself a fall guy in Jim Bolan,” Mitch said.
“That part was even easier,” she said, nodding. “Since he’d been a sniper in ’Nam, I chose a sniper’s roost. And planted one of Jim’s cigarette butts there that I stole from an ashtray. With three pairs of heavy socks on, I was able to wear his mudroom boots up there. By carrying the Barrett, my weight even approximated his. If they wanted to build a case against him, and they did, the shoe prints were his. I knew what time she’d be getting home. I waited for her there at the crossroads. When she came to a stop, I let her have it. It was perfect. And I would have gotten away with it, too, if that damned pig Melanie hadn’t wrecked everything. She wanted twenty thousand to keep quiet. Twenty thousand or she’d talk. Damn that woman!”