I slipped around to the front door. It was open. I went inside silently. John Andera heard me when I was twenty feet away in the rustic room, and half behind him to his left.
“I’ve got my gun, Andera,” I said.
I hoped my voice wasn’t shaking. I couldn’t play with him. If he moved, I’d have to shoot. If I gave him one chance, I was as good as dead.
His eyes looked toward me.
27
John Andera looked toward me, and then back at Katje Crawford, and let his gun drop away from him with a small toss. Too dead inside now to even try to run and end it all his own way if that meant more struggle. My stomach relaxed. I went limp. I hadn’t been so sure I was any match for him even with my gun and the advantage.
“Shoot him,” Katje Crawford said. “He’s a murderer ten times over. Shoot him now.”
“I’ll take him in,” I said.
“He’ll fool you,” she said. “He shot Tony in cold blood.”
Andera said, “Sasser admitted it, Fortune. He was scared, he talked. He told Zaremba that Francesca had really seen my face when I killed Leland, that she was working with the police, that she knew Leland had been killed to protect the Black Mountain Lake project. He made Zaremba send me to kill Fran.”
His dead eyes turned toward Katje Crawford. She still stood against the wall in that red slack suit, fear and a kind of hate on her face.
“I didn’t know it was Francesca,” Andera said to her. “I didn’t recognize her. I killed those who made me do it.”
Katje Crawford opened her handbag and took out a cigarette. Her hands shook, she could barely light the cigarette. Her eyes seemed hypnotized by John Andera’s face, watching only him.
I said, “Did Sasser tell you why he did it, Andera?”
Katje Crawford looked at me now. The look was one of sheer terror.
“What?” John Andera said.
“Did Sasser tell you why he told Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous? It was all a lie. Francesca didn’t see your face when you killed Leland, she couldn’t identify you. She wasn’t holding anything back, she had no evidence against you or Zaremba. All she was doing was looking for her real father. Nothing else. So what reason did Sasser have to lie to Zaremba and get her killed?”
It was so silent in that big lodge room that I could hear the cars on the distant county highway, and the slow drip of the last drops of the stopped rain from the trees outside.
Andera said, “He had his reasons, Fortune. He did it. He told me he did it.”
“He did it,” I said. “The question is why?”
Katje Crawford said, “He was sure Francesca knew too much. He told me that.”
She smoked, the cigarette trembling in her frightened hand like a rabbit shivering in the open as a fox stalked. I spoke to John Andera.
“I told Katje there that Sasser had talked to Francesca in New York. You heard me tell her tonight, didn’t you, Andera? You were outside the Crawford house listening. I told her, and she came running to Sasser. Why? They were lovers, Andera. She was tossing over Crawford, as she tossed you over twenty years ago. But she didn’t come here just to warn Sasser.”
Katje Crawford said, “Stop it, Fortune.”
I said, “All Francesca was doing was looking for her real father. That’s all. The rest was lies, a smoke screen set up by Sasser-and by Katje.”
I turned to face Katje Crawford. “You told Sasser to lie to Zaremba and have Francesca killed.”
She shook her head sharply. “You’re wrong. She was my daughter. You’re terribly wrong.”
“A daughter you were never close to, always hated. Both the twins, really, because they were as much a part of Blackwind as they were of you. But Francesca mostly because she was most like her real father, because she sensed your hate of her, your fear. Since she was a little girl she was different, against you, sensed the wall between you. A wall of hate and fear because you’ve always been afraid Blackwind would someday come back. You never believed he died in that escape. Death, Katje, that’s what you’re afraid of. The fear of being killed if Blackwind ever found out the real truth.”
Katje Crawford smoked, drew the smoke deep into her lungs. John Andera watched her. I moved closer to him.
“After Francesca left home,” I said, “Katje found out what old Emil Van Hoek had told Francesca. We’ll never know if she killed old Van Hoek, too, or if he just died under the strain. A little of both, maybe. But, whatever, Katje was terrified of what would happen if Francesca got to you and told you what she had learned from Emil Van Hoek.
“You see, she had recognized you that time you went to Sasser about the contract to kill Leland. I don’t know how, but she did. Then Francesca went looking for you, and Katje had to stop her. She got Sasser to locate Francesca, and he did. Then she had him tell Zaremba that Francesca was dangerous, that Zaremba had to stop her. What Katje and Sasser hadn’t expected was that Zaremba would send you to kill your own daughter! Chance, accident, call it fate again.
“Then I showed up hired by someone. They had to know who hired me. Sasser tailed me to find out, and spotted you that morning in front of my office. He knew who you were, and what you were, and what had happened. He knew you were trying to find out who had made you kill Francesca, so he tried to shoot you, but got me instead. Then you killed Zaremba, and they really panicked. They had set Francesca up for murder, you had killed her, and now you were after them. They didn’t dare risk me finding it all out, so Katje killed Carl Gans who could have led me to the truth. Only he lived just too long. He told me enough.”
Andera said, “What could Francesca have told me?”
I looked at Katje Crawford. It was, after all, her story. She said nothing, stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray as if unaware of what she was doing. A reflex action, neat and orderly, a well-mannered woman. Andera was close to me now, his false blue eyes staring into my face, waiting.
I shrugged. “That you didn’t shoot Emil Van Hoek back there eighteen years ago. The one crime you couldn’t evade. The charge that sent you to prison and ruined your life, and you never did it. You shot up that room at random. Emil Van Hoek fell behind the couch. You didn’t see him again, did you? You left with Katje and the children. You drove off. But you stopped at the end of the street, and-”
Andera said, “Katje ran back. She said she had dropped some medicine the kids had to have. She ran back, I waited in the car. I had the kids, they were crying, the motor was running, I-”
“You were distracted, not thinking about gunshots. The kids were noisy, a Nambu makes little noise. Katje had your pistol with her, easy to grab it in the confusion, you had put down the guns to drive. Later, at the trial, you assumed you’d hit old Van Hoek in that first volley of wild shots in the room. Van Hoek never came to court. But he knew who had shot him.”
I faced Katje Crawford. “What was your father to do back then? His own daughter had shot him, but could he send her to prison, ruin her life and her children’s lives? So he never told. He kept silent, and felt guilty all these years. That was why he didn’t reveal that he knew Ralph Blackwind was alive, and that was why he finally told the truth to Francesca. He was near death, she was aware of her real father at last from Joel Pender’s mistake, so he told her, and that was why you had her killed.”
Katje Crawford’s eyes had the fear in them, and the hate, too, and a kind of strangely detached anger-at a world that wouldn’t behave as she insisted it should? How dare the world not do what she wanted? Then and now. It was the world’s fault, Ralph Blackwind’s fault for not understanding back then that she had had to correct a mistake, the fault of Francesca for being the intransigent child she had been.
“You had to come back,” she said to Andera. “Ruin my life. So insane you thought I’d actually go with you that night, never even noticed that I took your pistol back to the house. Yes, I shot my father. I hoped I’d killed him! You would have gone to the electric chair then! He didn’t die, but he didn’t tell, either. It was fine. Only the old fool had to tell Francesca three months ago! He wanted her to know the truth about her real father before he died. He told her. And I knew you were really alive. I’d seen you.”