My head and hand were beating to different drummers, but my thoughts were beginning to flow freely again. Hans Westergaard had told his caretaker to get the house ready. Had he mentioned-master to servant-that he was bringing his mistress? Snow had been lying in wait for Ashley to arrive.
“But why Westergaard?” I asked.
“He shouldn’t have cheated on Jill. He had no right to do that.”
“You killed Ashley for her?”
He snickered but didn’t answer my question. He just scratched his nose absently.
I needed to keep talking, keep stalling. “The police know it’s you, Snow.”
The crowbar stopped waving. “There’s nothing they can pin on me. It’s pretty easy to set up alibis. Just drop in on some diners and gas stations. Make sure people see you. Collect receipts. If you turn on the TV loud in your apartment, people will swear you were there all day.”
In my mind I saw his white pickup truck with the snowplow parked outside the Square Deal Diner. I saw his face sneering at me from the other end of the counter the morning after Ashley Kim disappeared. Even then, he’d already been readying his alibis.
“They’ll connect the dots.”
“Cops are dumb,” he said. “Including you.” He was trying to project self-assuredness, but I detected a hint of desperation behind the bluff.
“I know you killed the Driskos. They saw you at the crash scene with Ashley. They demanded money to keep quiet.”
Some of the confidence drained out of those quick-moving eyes. “What else?”
“You murdered Nikki Donnatelli.”
“Strike one,” he said with a one-sided grin. “Jefferts killed that girl. A jury said so.”
“You used to be friends.”
“That’s what Erland thought.”
So why hadn’t Jefferts named Snow as an alternate suspect? He’d named every other degenerate in Seal Cove. “You pinned the murder on him.”
His eyes became merry. “There’s proof I didn’t.”
“What kind of proof?”
He reached inside his peacoat and removed something from his inner pocket. It was a cell phone. “I’ve got a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
I was baffled. How would a cell phone enable him to avoid prison? “Is that Jefferts’s?”
“No, this one is mine, but you’re getting warmer. That’s strike two, by the way.” He dropped the phone and raised the crowbar, clutching it with both hands, imitating a batting stance. “You know what happens with strike three, right?” He swung the club. It whistled through the air above my head.
“You’re going to beat me to death?”
“I’m considering my options.”
“You’re out of options, Snow.”
“That’s what you think.” He said this with such calmness that I was completely unprepared when he came vaulting across the table at me.
Snow was quick and agile for such a gangly man. He tossed aside the crowbar and grabbed the whiskey bottle and knelt hard against my chest, pinning me to the sofa. With his free hand, he pinched my nose and began pouring scalding whiskey down my throat. I clamped my teeth shut, so the liquor spilled down my shirt, but he held my nostrils firmly, waiting for me to gasp for breath. When I did, he emptied the bottle down my gullet.
After he’d finished, he backed off, leaving me hacking. My insides burned like I’d swallowed acid. I could feel the whiskey trying to come back up.
“This is a pretty shitty little house,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I guess they don’t pay game wardens crap. No wonder you’re so depressed.”
I coughed and spit, trying to vomit up the alcohol. My eyes had become gushers again, so he appeared blurred to me once more. I became aware of Snow stooping to retrieve his crowbar from the floor.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that pretty girl of yours to come home?’ he asked.
I tried to sputter out something but couldn’t.
“I’ve been having trouble getting your gun safe open.” He gestured with his crowbar to the bedroom. “You mind telling me the combination?”
“Fuck you.”
“Figured you’d say that.”
He smacked my right arm again with the steel bar. I managed to move the wrist at the last second so that the blow caught me on the muscle of my forearm. Pain traveled up the median nerve and into my spinal column.
Snow peered at me from beneath his Frankenstein brow. “Yeah, I know all about you. Your old man shot himself, right? And Ruth Libby said you blew the head off some Indian. And now Calvin Barter’s boy is gonna be a vegetable because of you.” He began rocking back and forth on his boot heels. “No wonder you’re such a basket case, Bowditch. When I saw you at the Harpoon, I said, ‘That guy’s gonna blow his brains out some night.’” He let out a fake yawn. “What’s the combination to the safe?”
His plan was to make my death look like suicide. It would seem that I’d swallowed my gun out of guilt for Ashley Kim, Hans Westergaard, Travis Barter, and every other reason I had to feel depressed. And the state police might even believe it, too. Would Charley and Kathy, though? What about Sarah? In my heart of hearts I feared that everyone I knew would accept the evidence that I had committed suicide, just like my cowardly father had.
“Two suicides in two days, Westergaard and me,” I said. “No one will believe it.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
The whiskey came surging into my bloodstream. “I’m not going to tell you the combination.”
He plopped down suddenly in the chair. The legs squeaked across the floor. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should wait for Sarah to come home.”
He reached into his coat sleeve and, like a vaudeville magician performing a trick, drew out a wad of cloth. It was a pair of Sarah’s underpants. He dangled it between us and then pressed the cotton against his nose and inhaled loudly.
I snarled at him and tried to rise, but he pushed me back with the curved end of the crowbar.
The alcohol was beginning to zap the nerve connections in my brain. Sarah was due home any minute. The thought of this monster raping the woman I loved in front of my eyes was the most horrific thing I could imagine.
Dear God, I prayed. Please don’t let him hurt her. He can kill me and it will be all right, but please don’t let him hurt Sarah. I won’t fight him if you just make him go away afterward. I’ll trade my life for hers, God. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but please, God, don’t let him hurt her.
“So what’s it going to be?” Snow asked.
My eyelids were getting heavy. There was no escape. All I could do was save Sarah. Let him shoot me with my Walther and maybe he’d go away before she came home.
Except the Walther wasn’t in the safe. My off-duty weapon was still in my coat pocket.
“The combination is forty-three fifty-five,” I mumbled.
“You’d better not be fucking with me.”
I closed my eyes and shook my drowsy head to indicate that I was being truthful.
Snow flicked my nose with his finger. “Don’t pass out on me yet.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, as if I were slipping into unconsciousness. I heard him give a hyena laugh and then I heard the stomping of his boots as he left the room. It wouldn’t take long for him to realize the combination was bogus.
The whiskey had numbed much of the pain in my body, but the booze had left me uncoordinated. It took all my strength to sit up on the couch. I leaned my weight on my good arm and tried to get my feet under me, but it was as if my legs had turned to spaghetti. I crashed forward onto the pine floorboards. I tried to crawl toward my coat, which was hanging beside the door.
Snow sprang from the bedroom and stepped hard on my spine. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I could barely breathe with his weight crushing me. “It’s twenty-one fifty-four,” I gasped.
“What?” He removed his boot but held it ready to crack my spine.
I flopped onto my back. “The combination is my call number.” This was the truth; I didn’t figure I could lie to him twice.