He was unsteady on his feet, head nodding a little, eyes glass. Dead drunk, she thought, with a jolt of fear.
“John—”
His lips moved but he didn’t make a sound.
“You can’t be here,” she said. “Please go away.”
He leaned against the jamb momentarily, then walked as if he were wearing dungeon irons toward the bed.
“No, John,” she said. Prepared to fight him off.
He gestured as if waving away her objection. “Couldn’t stop her,” he mumbled. “Hit me. Gone. This is—”
Three feet from Echo he lost what little control he had of his body, pitched forward to the bed, held onto the comforter for a few moments, eyes rolling up meekly in his head; then he slowly crumpled to the floor.
Echo jumped off the bed to kneel beside him. She saw the swelling lump as large as her fist through the hair on the left side of his head. There was a little blood—in his hair, sprinkled on his shirt collar. Not a gusher. She didn’t mind the sight of blood but she knew she might have lost it if he was critically injured.
Didn’t look so bad on the outside but the fragile brain had taken a beating. That was her biggest worry.
There was no doctor on the island. Three men and a woman were certified as EMTs, but Echo didn’t know who they were or where they lived.
She was able to lift him up onto the bed. Deja vu all over again, without the threat of hypothermia this time. He wasn’t unconscious. She rolled him onto his stomach and turned his head aside so he would be less likely to aspirate his own vomit if he became nauseous. Ciera, she knew, sometimes got the vapors over a hot stove and kept ammonium carbonate on hand. Echo fled downstairs to the kitchen, found the smelling salts, twisted ice in a towel and ran back to her room.
She heard him snoring gently. It had to be a good sign. She carefully packed the swelling in ice.
What a crack on the head. Let him sleep or keep him awake? She wiped at tears that wouldn’t stop. Go down the road and knock on doors until she found an EMT? But she was afraid to go out into freezing wind and dark, afraid of Taja.
Taja, she thought, as the shutter slammed and her backbone iced up to the roots of her hair. Couldn’t stop her, John had said. Gone. But why had she done this to him, what were they fighting about?
Echo slid the hammer from under the bed. She went to the door. There was no lock. She put a straight-back chair against it, jammed under the doorknob, then climbed back onto her bed beside John Ransome.
She counted his pulse, wrote it down, noted the time. Every fifteen minutes. Keep doing it, all night.
While watching over him. Until he woke up, or—but she refused to think about the alternative.
At dawn he stirred and opened his eyes. Looked at her without comprehension.
“Brigid?”
“I’m Ec—Mary Catherine, John.”
“Oh.” His eyes cleared a little. “Happened to me?”
“I think Taja hit you with something. No, don’t touch that lump.” She had him by the wrist.
“Wha? Never did that before.” An expression close to terror crossed his face. “Where she?”
“I don’t know, John.”
“Bathroom.”
‘You’re going to throw up?”
“No. Don’t think so. Pee.”
She helped him to her bathroom and waited outside in case he lost consciousness again and fell. She heard him splash water in his face, moaning softly. When he came out again he was steadier on his feet. He glanced at her.
“Did I call you Brigid?”
“Yes.”
“Would’ve been like you, if she’d lived.”
“Lie down again, John.”
“Have to—”
“Do what?”
He shook his head, and regretted it. She guided him to her bed and he stretched out on his back, eyes closing.
“Stay with me?”
“I will, John.” She touched her lips to his dry lips. Not exactly a kiss. And lay down beside him, staring at the first flush of sun through the window with the broken shutter. She felt anxious, a little demoralized, but im-mensely grateful that he seemed to be okay.
As for Taja, when he was ready they were going to have a serious talk. Because she un-derstood now just how deeply afraid John Ransome was of the Woman in Black.
And his fear had become hers.
THIRTEEN
The SUV Silkie had been driving belonged to a thirty-two-year-old architect named Mil gren who lived a few blocks from MIT in Cambridge. Peter called Milgren’s firm and was told he was attending a friend’s wedding in the Bahamas and would be away for a few days. Was there a Mrs. Milgren? No.
Eight inches of fresh snow had fallen overnight. The street in front of the building where Milgren lived was being plowed. Peter had a late breakfast, then returned. The address was a recently renovated older building with a gated drive on one side and tenant parking behind it. He left his rental car in the street behind a painter’s van. The day was sharply blue, with a lot of ice-sparkle in the leafless trees. The snow had moved west.
The gate of the parking drive was opening for a Volvo wagon. He went in that way and around to the parking lot, found the Cadillac Escalade in its assigned space. Apartment 4-C.
There were four apartments on the fourth floor, two at each end of a wide well-lit marble-floored hallway. There was a skylight above the central foyer: elevator on one side, staircase on the other.
The painter or painters had been working on the floor, but the scaffold that had been erected to make it easier to get at the fifteen-foot-high tray ceiling was unoccupied. On the scaffold a five-gallon can of paint was overturned. A pool of it like melted pistachio ice cream was spreading along the marble floor. The can still dripped.
Pete looked from the spilled paint to the door of 4-C, which stood open a couple of feet. There was a TV
on inside, loudly showing a rerun of Hollywood Squares.
He walked to the door and looked in. An egg-crate set filled with decommissioned celebrities was on the LCD television screen at one end of a long living room. He edged the door half open. A man wearing a painter’s cap occupied a recliner twenty feet from the TV. All Peter could see of him was the cap, and one hand gripping an arm of the chair as if he were about to be catapulted into space.
Peter rapped softly and spoke to him but the man didn’t look around. There was a lull in the hilarity on TV as they went to commercial. He could hear the man breathing. Shallow, distressed breaths. Pete walked in and across the short hall, to the living room. Plantation-style shutters were closed. Only a couple of low-wattage bulbs glowed in widely separated wall sconces. All of the apartment was quite dark in contrast to the brilliant day outside.
“I’m looking for Silkie,” he said to the man. “She’s staying here, isn’t she?”
No response. Peter paused a few feet to the left of the man in the leather recliner. His feet were up. His paint-stained coveralls had the look of impressionistic masterpieces. By TV light his jowly face looked sweaty. His chest rose and fell as he tried to drag more air into his lungs.
‘You okay?”
The man rolled his eyes at Peter. The fingers of his left hand had left raw scratch marks all over the red leather armrest. His other hand was nearly buried in the pulpy mass above his belt. Pete smelled the blood.
“She—made me do it—talk to the lady— get her to—unlock the door. Help me. Can’t move. Guts are—falling out. My daughter’s coming home—for the holidays. Now I won’t be here.”
Peter’s gun was in his hand before the man had said ten words. “Where are they?”
The painter had run out of time. He sagged a little as his life ebbed away. His eyes remained open.
There was a burst of laughter from the TV.
“Jesus and Mary,” Pete whispered, then raised his voice to a shout. “Silkie, you okay? It’s the police!”
With his other hand he dug out his cell phone, dialed without looking, identified himself.
“Do you want police, fire, or medical emergency?”
“Cops. Paramedics. I’ve got a dying man here.”
He began his sweep of the apartment while he was still on the phone.
“Please stay on the line, Detective,” the dispatcher said. “Help is on the way.”
“I may need both hands,” Peter said, and dropped the cell phone back into his pocket.
He kicked open a door to what appeared to be the architect’s study and workroom. Enough light coming in here to show him at a glance the room was empty.