“Miss?” The waiter leaned over her. “You have a gentleman at the bar who says he is to meet you. He says his name is—”
“Reid. Yes. Send him over. And send a flute of champagne and a bourbon over, also.”
A few footsteps fell out behind her, and she turned in the wire backed chair. There seemed nothing remarkable about the man who had made them, except that, despite his relaxed attitude, he seemed not to belong to this place, as if it were above his pay grade and he was afraid for someone to notice.
He approached the table and put his hand out. She took it and smiled.
“I’m Camillo Reid. You left a message on my machine.” He took a seat opposite. “What can I help you with?”
But her eyes were on the floor below their balcony, down at the piano and the polished wood, down to the dark young man who was stepping up into the stage lights. In his hands was a large shell-pink orchid, into which he gazed intently. Slowly, the noise of the room died down — the crashing of pans from behind the kitchen doors, the clang of the silverware, the low hum of whispered secrets — all of it stopped. From behind, a piano began to play. Then, the dark young man raised his eyes, cut them across the room, across the ice, and to hers, and then he opened his mouth, and his gaze fled hers, back to the flower, back to where it was safer, and he began to sing.
“Night and day…”
She turned her eyes back to Reid, lit chiaroscuro by the candle on the tabletop. “May I call you Camillo?”
“I prefer just Cam.”
“Cam, someone is trying to kill me.”
Reid almost opened his mouth to reply, but then the insect returned with the drinks, and they waited patiently until he left again. Lifting the bourbon, he took a sip and smiled as if it was better than he had expected. Then he asked, “Do you know who?”
“Yes.” She took a sip of her Champagne. “Him.” And she saw Reid’s eyes, which had been lingering elsewhere about her person, slip along her shoulders and down her arm, along the curve of her wrist and the outstretched index finger… and onto the floor below, to the dark young man in the tuxedo, singing to her.
Cam put down the drink.
“What is his name?”
As he asked, he turned his gaze to the singer, afraid to look at her again, lest he be caught. Normally a discreet leer was nothing he blushed at, but this was business. It was unprofessional.
“Adam Kerr.”
“And what is he to you? Or you to him?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Why does he want you dead?”
“Because he is stalking me, because he cannot have me.”
“Hmm…” He leaned back in his chair and sipped at his bourbon again. He was not used to being treated to the good stuff, and felt that, if this were a fool’s errand, the fool at least would be well imbibed. “With all due respect Ms. Martin —”
“Delfinae.”
“— Delfinae then — with all due respect, with your husband’s money, you can afford to hire much better protection than me.”
She cringed.
“I’m sorry, I did not mean to be rude —”
“No, no. It’s all right. It’s been four long months, I should be used to it by now… but even so, each morning, it is strange not to find his head on the pillow next to mine — but then you know what loss is.”
The chair came down hard on the floor. “Yes.” He swished the rest of the bourbon around in his glass, and decided it was not wise to go back to the places he had been before. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“You came well recommended for your discretion.”
“And my price?”
“You will be well paid. More than you are accustomed to, I would suppose.” He searched for a hint of sneer in her face with that remark, and yet, could find no trace of anything that would not have looked fit on an Orthodox ikon. But his thoughts certainly belonged in no church, and he made a mental note to avoid meeting female clients outside of his office in the future.
“Will you excuse me a moment?” She stood.
“Of course.”
As she walked away, she was not so happy that he had not stood when she had left the table — but then she had not hired him for his breeding. Rounding a few of the pillars, she descended to the floor and felt his eyes on her back, and beamed. She passed the stage, where Adam stood chatting with the pianist, and went down the corridor. Before turning into the lady’s room, she wheeled around on her heels and waved at Adam. Making some excuses, he came over, walking rather too quickly, so that she was afraid that Reid would notice.
He came right up to her and put his hands on her waist and his lips on her neck. She could feel his frantic energy building dangerously, and was afraid just where those hands would go, and slapped them away.
“Not here, not in the corridor!”
“But it’s been so long!”
She put a hand on his chest and shoved him away. “There’s no time —”
“There’s never any time!”
“Shhh!” She put a good kiss on his lips and then pinned him to the wall, one arm over both of his shoulders. “Did you see the man I am dining with tonight?”
“Yes.” Kiss. “Who is he?” Longer kiss.
“His name is Reid. He’s a private detective.”
Adam went cold. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know. But he’s been asking about Harry.”
“Damn.” There was no ardor in him now, as he shrunk beneath her against the plaster. “Do you think…?”
“I don’t know that either, but I think he might be fishing for blackmail.”
He looked back out to the floor, as if expecting Reid to emerge around the corner any minute. “I just wish…”
She kissed him again, letting her tongue linger on his lips, and felt him stand a little taller as she did so. “What do you wish, Adam, my love?”
“I just wish that we wouldn’t have to be like this.”
“Lovers?”
“Hiding. Scared. Secret lovers, not out in the open like regular couples.”
“Well it’s men like Reid that prevent that. You do understand that, don’t you?”
She felt his hands traveling up her spine, around the side of her torso, and up against her breasts. His eyes took her in, and then came back to hers. He sighed, and all the force of life seemed to dwindle in him as he did so. “Yes. I do.”
Daylight, and Delfinae bound her left wrist down to the table with cord, until she could no longer stand the biting of the fibers. The length of the underside of her arm, white from lack of sun exposure, sat now upwards against the sky. She was insulated well. About her stood acres and acres of trees, the legacy of Harry’s estate to her, and dense enough to drown even the loudest of screams. She knew that for certain.
Beside her, on a bench, sat a small first aid kit with cotton swabs, alcohol, and any number of aids she might need. On the other side, a short length of two-by-four. Gripping it hard, she raised it in her right hand —
— and brought it down on her left arm with one, swift strike.
Delfinae collapsed. Her legs went out from under her. And then she found herself clumsily scattered over the bench, the first aid kit dispersed across the ground. She had bit her lip, and it was bleeding profusely… so much the better. Pulling on the table edge with her right hand, she re-seated herself. Her fingers gently felt out the soft flesh of her left forearm, noting with a sting the tenderness that would turn into quite a bruise. About the wrist, the cord had dug in and broken the skin, just slightly.
She closed her eyes, and remembered. Adam in her bed for the first time. Harry Martin, carrying a shotgun into the wood. Her body covered in bruises. Doctor Kimbrell telling her just why she had felt so sick lately. Camillo Reid’s face above the candlelight.
Then she opened her eyes, and lifted the two-by-four again. The birds fled the trees as she brought it down for a second strike. And a third. And a fourth.
It was two in the morning, as Reid staggered awake from the sound of knocking on his door. He pulled on a pair of pants for decency, and dug out the Colt from his desk drawer for safety. It didn’t pay to open the door easily at odd hours in his line of work.
He need not have bothered, as he cracked open the door.
“Cam, let me in, it’s me. Please. Hurry.”
He brought the door open, and was collapsed upon by Delfinae. Struggling with her weight, he propped her up between the wall of the foyer and his shoulder, and kicked shut the door. Leaving her leaning there, he went over to a floor lamp and turned it on, then recoiled. The face that had inspired fear and lust was now pulpy and bloated, her eyelids a heavy purple, her cheekbones scratched and bleeding. Her lip was covered in crusted blood, which had left a line of crimson stain down her chin and neck. Her arms, once white, were now black, bruised everywhere, and she seemed barely able to stand.
He immediately put his arms under her shoulders and lifted, half carrying, half dragging her over to the couch, and set her gently in it.
“Have you seen a doctor yet?”
“No.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it dark out when it happened?”
She tried to shake her head, and cringed. “It was…. it was… light… still light….”
“We need to get you some medical attention.”
“Noooooooooooooooooo….” Her voice trailed off into nothingness.
“We must. These are some serious bruises, and I want to make sure nothing is broken. I’ve been in some fights in my time. I’m afraid for this wrist,” he said, palming her left hand. “If it’s broken it needs immediate treatment.”
She moaned.
“We must. You really have no choice. C’mon, lean on my shoulders, I’ll take you out to my car and drive you to Legacy Emmanuel.”
“No, no, no, no, no. No hospitals.”
“But —”
“Doctor. Private doctor. Please.” Her eyes for the first time rolled up at him. “I don’t want to read about this in the paper tomorrow morning. Please.”
He looked down at her and sighed. “All right. Let me get a shirt and some shoes, and my keys.”
Reid went back to the bedroom, opened a drawer, and pulled on a shirt from it. He decided to stow the gun there; he would not need it where they were going.
From the living room: “Take my car. Keys are still in it.”
“You what?” He walked back in, trying to keep his voice under control. “In this neighborhood?” Going to the window, he peered out between the blinds at the sleek Jaguar sedan and shook his head at her foolishness. What was the woman thinking?
Doctor Kimbrell was a thin man with even thinner patience, and was in no mood to be woken at such an odd hour. However, when his gaze had went past Reid’s unfamiliar shape, and spotted Delfinae sitting in the car, even in that predawn half light, a stern, determined look settled upon him.
He looked at Reid. “I will need your help to carry her.”
Balancing her between them, they carried her up into the brick Tudor, through the deep paneled hall, and set her on a green leather couch in a large, book lined study.
“I’ll go back out and take care of the car,” Reid said. The doctor seemed to take no note, too busy rooting about in a large bag on the floor to notice. By the time he had shut off the Jag, locked it up, and returned, Kimbrell had taken off Delfinae’ blouse and was dressing her wounds with alcohol.
“If you could please wait in the other room?” He did not even turn his head to face him.
“Of course.”
Reid withdrew to an adjoining room, this one apparently some kind of den. Immediately he spotted a drinks cabinet, which, when tried, proved unlocked. He thought the good doctor would not mind if, given the circumstances, he helped himself to a small drink. A particularly nice scotch appealed… but then he shook his head. He knew his limits now.
“I thought I would not see her like that again,” Reid heard from behind him. He placed the bottle back gently and turned.
“If you would like a drink, don’t hesitate. Very understandable, all things considered.” Kimbrell was wiping his hands with a linen towel, his glasses perched high on his bald head.
“No, I had better not. Not very wise, really.”
“Ah. Yes. Perhaps so, in your case.”
Reid felt an eyebrow raise on his forehead.
“I have a good memory for faces, Lieutenant Reid. I recall yours from the paper a few years back.”
“It’s not Lieutenant anymore, doc.”
Kimbrell cleared his throat, then paced over to the dark windows.
“You said you had not expected to see her like this again? What did you mean by that?”
“I — mister Reid, I think you ought to ask Delfinae these things, not me.”
“Delfinae is in no state to tell me now, is she?”
“No, but —”
“But someone has just severely beaten her, and it’s my job to protect her. You would have me uninformed about those threats to her safety?”
Kimbrell sighed. Then: “There was a time when she came to me quite beaten, regularly.”
“Regularly?”
“Almost once a week. But not so severely — at least, not until the end, before the beatings stopped.”
“When did they stop?”
“Four months ago. When Harry Martin died.”
Delfinae opened her eyes, and found herself huddled into the passenger seat of the Jaguar, a seat belt badly strapped across her. Beside her, sitting behind the wheel, was Reid.
“Where are we?”
“Just about home.”
“Your home?”
“No. Yours.”
Then she was being carried somewhere… and then she was leaning against Reid in the doorway to her house, and Reid was asking, “What is your security code for this damned keypad?”
“4-5-2-5…….”
It took little time before they were inside, and then she turned her head and felt the silk against her cheek, and the strong hands on her shoulders. “No….” she let slip. “Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.”
“You want me to stay here tonight?”
“Mmmm….”
“Delfinae, who did this?”
She did not reply.
“You’ve been beaten before. By your husband?”
She frowned and began to toss in the bed. She felt his hands hold her wrists down, but not painfully so.
“By your husband?”
“No. He killed my husband.”
“Who killed your husband? Kerr?” She felt his breath on her face. “I thought he died in a hunting accident?”
“He beat me.”
His hands released her wrists.
Reaching up, she put her arms around his neck, then pulled him downwards, closer to her. His lips were not as rough as she had thought they would be, nor were his hands as he ran them down her body. Soon he was beside her in the silk sheets, and she was crying, but not because of pain.
She drifted off afterwards, but Reid did not. What had she meant? Who had beat her? Surely not her husband, for he was in no position to repeat the maneuver. Adam Kerr? But if Kerr had killed her husband… none of it made any sense.
A single finger of his outstretched, and he let it follow the contours of her body, and watched her smile in her sleep. Who was Delfinae, really? He found the perfection of her body distracting, and he wondered if he would still be able to perform his job if he were this close to her. Hell, he wondered, too, if she would still be his employer come dawn. But that was the future, and for now, he enjoyed letting his fingers caress her flawless skin….
Flawless. Perfect. He sat up in bed, he looked at the clock. Could he get away with it?
Adam walked down the block, a newspaper under his arm, a paper cup of cappuccino in his hand, his head buried in the overstory of trees in the park. He still wore a tux from his work the last night, it’s collar turned up and the tie in his pocket — he had not yet been home, instead spending the night in the empty bar, smoking. He needed to shave, something he was still not used to doing, and he needed some sleep, something he was not used to getting. There was only one place he had slept well in the past year, but he had not been there in a good long while.
He sat on one of the benches, still watching the treetops, when he sensed a car pull up at the curb. He looked down at it. Delfinae’ navy Jag, with her behind the wheel. He sprang to his feet and approached the window, noting as he neared that her eyes were rimmed in red, and the split lip, and then, all the rest that could be seen.
“My god, what happened?”
“Get in.”
He did not hesitate.
“Remember that guy in the restaurant?”
“The blackmailer?” He nodded as she pulled onto the freeway. “You sure you don’t want me to drive?”
“His name is Reid. And I was right, blackmail is his game.”
“Did he… did he do this?”
She opened her mouth, but never made a sound. Silence choked her, and then the tears, and the Jag slowed and then stopped on the shoulder of the freeway, what little there was. Cars passed them by on the left, angrily honking their horns, their drivers gesturing wildly or shouting epithets at them as they passed.
“Delfinae we can’t stop here.”
She seemed not to hear him. He reached over between her arms and switched on the four-way flashers, then turned off the motor and engaged the emergency brake.
“Delfinae, what happened?”
“He… he….”
“Beat you? Why?”
“Because!” She said between gasps for air. “I wouldn’t pay him!”
Adam leaned back in the seat. “How much did he want?”
“Four million. Cash.”
“What for?”
“He says he has pictures.”
“Of what?”
“Of what happened. In the woods.”
“How?”
She shook her head. “I — don’t — know!” Then she let her hand fall from her eyes and leaned over on his shoulder. “He says he will go to the police with them if I don’t pay him by the end of the week.”
“Shit.”
Her breathing steadied somewhat as she leaned against him. “It feels so nice to be near you again. I miss you so much at night….”
“What can we do about this Reid guy?”
She looked up at him. “I’ve told him to meet me at the beach house tomorrow afternoon.”
“What for?”
“To pay him.”
“I thought you refused.”
“I did.”
“Then… I don’t understand.”
“Something has to be done, Adam.”
He pushed her away, but gently. “Not again! Please, no.”
“It’s the only way.” He felt her fingers under his shirt, searching.
He sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
Reid pulled the white pickup to a stop in front of the phone junction box at the corner below Doc Kimbrell’s. Getting out, he donned an orange safety vest and baseball cap, then stuck the rotating yellow beacon on the cab roof and turned it on.
In the back of the truck was an orange toolbox, and inside, a photocopied schematic of the local phone lines as they joined at this box. A few quick seconds later, and all the phones in the neighborhood were down.
He worked fast, taking the toolbox with him. A quick walk up the hill to Kimbrell’s, a duck behind the house and up the side yard. The deadbolts made subtlety too slow an option, so he duct-taped a crisscross pattern over a window, then broke it with a modicum of noise. Inside the door he had bypassed, the keypad was flashing, indicating the alarm was sounding. Too bad no-one could hear its cry for help, Cam thought with a twisted, self-satisfied smile.
Retracing his steps to the study, he crouched in front of the small filing cabinet he had noticed there. He reached for his lock-picks… then noticed there was no lock. Reid shook his head at the good doctor’s naiveté, and pulled open the drawer.
Marbett… Markle… Martin. He pulled out Delfinae’ file, while checking his watch.
Three minutes.
Flipping backwards, past the most recent notes, he searched for dates from early fall, before Harry Martin had been killed. Bingo! He began to read aloud.
“Patient… severe bruising… arms and shoulders… brought in at two a.m. by Adam Kerr….” He flipped back to an earlier report of a similar incident. “Arms and shoulders. Adam Kerr.” Flip. “Minor bruising to face, arms and shoulders. Kerr.”
Watch: seven minutes.
In a rush to finish the file, he lost his place, and the papers scattered out across the desktop.
“Damn!”
He picked them up one by one, careful not to crease them, and slipped them back into the folder in roughly chronological order. “Getting sloppy,” he said to himself, then stopped cold with a report in his hand, a report he had not seen till now, a report drafted but little more than a week ago.
Delfinae Kessler-Martin was three months pregnant.
Adam stood at the doorway and watched.
“Cam, please, come right away, I’m at the beach house, you know the way?” Delfinae gave him the directions he would need. “Hurry.”
Then she set the phone down.
“You need to go, he said he’d be here in under an hour, to pick up the money.”
“But, it’s cold out there.” he rubbed his arms. “It’s like forty degrees!”
She shot him a dark look, as if questioning his manhood.
He sighed. “And when do you, um… want me to….” He could think of no euphemism at the moment, so he just finished with, “come down?”
“After you see the smoke start in the chimney, when I light the fire.”
“And then what? Delfinae, are you sure about this?” he took a step forward. “I mean, this doesn’t seem very well thought out —”
“We can’t go back now! He’ll destroy us!” She came over to him, hovering by the doorway in darkness. “If I could pay him, to make him go away, I would. Don’t you think I would, Adam? Do you think I enjoy this?” Her harsh eyes came to his, filling quickly. “Anything, Adam, anything. Anything but this… again!”
“Then let’s not do it! Then let’s do something else!”
“Like what?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He had no answer. So, instead: “How are we going to get away with this?”
“We did it before,” said Delfinae, softly.
“You can’t have hunting accidents indoors.”
“Don’t worry about that. No one knows his connection to us. We’ll just put his body over the cliff, into the ocean, and let it wash up somewhere else. The sea water will take care of the evidence.”
He felt the pallor drain away from his face as he stepped backwards, and he knew, too that his eyes were widening. Then she drew close to him, and he felt the warmth of her body, and her lips on his, as if trying to breathe life back into the clay that was there. Then she withdrew a pace.
“I’ll leave the shotgun propped beside the door. All you have to do is pick it up as you enter.”
“Won’t he be armed?”
“He doesn’t carry.”
“A detective and no gun?”
She shook her head. “I don’t even think he owns one.”
Adam frowned. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then you’ll have to be a good, quick shot, my Love.” Then she pushed him away with one hand. “Now go, he’ll be here soon.”
Cam left the car by the road and walked up the gravel drive. Overhead the light was shielded out by the magnificent, decaying madronas. A hundred yards, give or take, and then he was upon the cabin, and the wooded hills to his left, and the sea breaking beyond, it’s tide invisible to him, hidden behind the depths of the rapidly dropping landscape.
At the door, he knocked, but heard no answer. His right hand went instinctively to his left hip holster. “Delfinae? You in there?”
From the other side came a rustling, then it cracked open. “Oh thank God you are here!” She pulled the door open wider, then gripped him hard and tugged him inside. Once it was shut behind them, she put her arms around his neck tightly and pulled his lips to hers. He let his hand slip off the gun butt for a little while.
Between kisses, he heard her say, “He said… he wants… wants to….”
He backed away slightly. “He said what?”
“He said he was going to kill me.”
“When did you talk to him?”
“I — he called.”
“He called to tell you he was coming?”
She nodded, putting her hands on his chest and avoiding his eyes.
“Why didn’t you just leave? Your car is right out front!”
“He said he could see me!”
Reid walked away from her and went over to the front window, peering over the half curtains, scanning the wood opposite. He could see nothing… at least, nothing yet. He wondered, too, if Harry Martin peered out at the woods thus the last day of his life.
He turned.
“Why did you beat yourself?”
She put her hands on her arms and rubbed them. “It’s cold,” she said, and walked towards the hearth. Crouching, she threw some kindling in with the logs there and reached for a match. Reid strode over quickly, bent over, and pulled her up by her wrists. She yelped.
“What did you do this for?” He held the wrist, with its raw marks from the cord, up to her face. “You tied your arm down and beat yourself with a blunt instrument. Why?”
“No!” She shook her head. “Not me!”
“Yes!” He shook her. “You!”
She began to cry. Letting go of her hands, he slapped her, and the tears stopped. “Did you think I was a fool, did you think I was still a drunk? Hell, even when I was drunk, I could still see straight, I could still tell when I was being sold a load of graft. You beat yourself. Why?”
“You already know!” she screamed, then bent over and began to light a match. She struck it too hard, and broke the head off. Emptying the box on the floor, she began to try them over and over, discarding them as they broke or as they fizzled.
“Yes,” Cam said. “I think I do. But I want to hear you say it.”
A match came to life, complete, and she stared at the flame a little while. Then she touched it to the kindling, blowing on it gently, until it began to take. Leaning back on the floor, with her back against the legs of an overstuffed chair, she let out a gasp of air. She had stopped shaking.
“He thought you were being beaten by your husband.” Cam nodded towards the wood. “Kerr.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Kimbrell’s files said you’d come to him a dozen times. You beat yourself a dozen times. The last one the severest of all.”
“He wasn’t sure. I had to give him a compelling reason.”
“The cord on your wrist?”
“To keep myself from moving the arm out of the way.”
“And Kerr doesn’t —”
Adam opened the door. In one move he swept up the shotgun from the side of the jamb and brought it up to point at the stranger…. The stranger turned, and raised a hand.
“Put the gun down, Kerr. No one is getting hurt today.”
“Put your hands in the air where I can see them.”
Adam blinked, then readjusted his grip on the stock.
“Before you let rip on that thing,” the stranger replied, “there is something you might want to know, something only I can tell you.”
By the fire, Delfinae had pulled herself up and into the chair, and was fiddling with the clasp of a purse in her lap. “I don’t care about anything a blackmailer would have to say to me.”
“Delfinae is pregnant,” the stranger said, ignoring him. “With your child.”
In her chair, Delfinae stopped moving.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s in her medical files. She’s three months pregnant. And Harry Martin sure as hell didn’t father it from the other side of his tombstone.”
He looked at Delfinae. “Is this true?”
“She wasn’t going to tell you,” continued the stranger. “Of course, she also wasn’t going to tell you that she hired me to trick me into killing you.”
“What are you —”
“She played you, Kerr, just like before. She beat herself, then said Harry did it, so you’d kill him to protect her.” A calmness descdended on the stranger’s face. “And then she beat herself again,” he added, “to play that trick on me, telling me you had done it. So that I would kill you. She played you, she played both of us.”
“It’s not true!” Delfinae pleaded.
“You are the only person she is truly afraid of,” added the stranger, “because you killed her husband. And because you loved her. Think, Kerr, think! You wanted nothing more than to be with her, but she’s avoided you since Harry died.”
“She said it was because of the police. Not to raise suspicion.”
“Suspicion of what? It was ruled an accident. The DA’s not interested. It’s only you that can prove what happened to Harry. And you want nothing more than to be her openly avowed lover, and she denied you this. How long before you forced the issue? You could demand anything of her, solely because of what you know. And further proof of your affair was coming along nicely in her womb.”
“I would never blackmail you.” Adam turned to her. “I love you! How could you think that of me?”
“It’s who she is, Kerr. Get it? You’re the patsy, you’re the next victim. She does not love you, she never loved —”
“No!” He raised the shotgun again, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Delfinae open her purse and withdraw the small black pistol.
“Cam!” She cried out, then tossed the weapon towards the stranger. He caught it, raised it.
Adam pulled the trigger, and Cam Reid went down in a haze of blue cordite smoke.
It stung. It stung and it hurt and it burned, as Cam put his fingers to his face. There was no mirror on the floor where he lay. Still, he knew that he had suffered a severe powder burn, at such close range to the muzzle of the shotgun. But there were no countless holes about his person. His hunch had been right.
Slowly he stood. Kerr still hung by the doorway, the shotgun raised, his body frozen in time. Delfinae sat in her chair and stared.
“This is what I meant, Kerr.” Reid could tell his hearing was not what it was, and could feel that he was shouting a little. “She loaded the damn shotgun with blanks. All powder, no shot. But this one…” he withdrew the clip from the small black pistol. “This one is loaded. She wanted you to fire your dummy shot, and expected that I would fire back out of instinct, and kill you.”
The shotgun dropped to the floor, making a loud clatter.
“Now you know what Harry Martin must’ve felt like.”
The young man stood there, motionless, then he bent over and vomited on the hardwood. To Reid’s left, Delfinae stood and rushed for the door. Yanking it open, she began to run. Then Kerr stood straight, wiped a hand across his mouth, and went out after her.
Reid let them go. Digging into his jacket pocket, he withdrew a small tape recorder, removed the tape, and slipped it inside his waist band. Then, circling the room, he wiped everything he had touched, using a handkerchief he kept in his pocket specifically for the purpose. The last thing he wiped down was the gun. Then he turned to leave, careful not to step in the pile of Kerr’s regurgitated lunch.
And then he heard the scream.
Bolting out the door, Reid ran over the weedy grass, through the lupines and through the artificial wood of birch. The beaten path came out at the edge of a palisade, and beside the rocks, Kerr, kneeling, his hands covering his face.
Reid approached, cautiously, keeping his jacket open at the left, above his holster. The boy seemed to take no notice of him. The edge was soft, crumbly, just sand that had piled in over the ages, held in but barely by beach grass and talus. Peering over and below, to where the Pacific was doing it’s damnedest to undermine the shoring, a patch of red.
Delfinae.
Kerr dropped his hands and stared up at him, his face bloated and covered in tears.
“I loved her… and I… I… I….”
Reid looked down at her a few moments more, and fumbled with the tape in his waistband. Bringing it out in the sunlight, he turned it over in his hands, and contemplated chucking it out into the sea with all the force he had in him. But you never could be too safe. He put it back.
He took one last look at Delfinae, as the breakers rolled in over her body below. “Looks to me like she fell.” Then Reid turned away.
Harbour Fordyce 