“No, they won’t,” I whispered back. “It’s nearly dark out here. That office is lit up brighter than Camden Yards when the Orioles are in town. But if it will make you happy…” I scrunched down next to Connie again.
“I can’t go on like this!” Dr. Chase sounded miserable.
“Do you think you’ll ever practice medicine again if this comes out? Besides, it’s not your decision, Frank. There are other people involved.”
“It’ll come out anyway. Hannah Ives has been asking a lot of questions. It’s only a matter of time before she goes to Rutherford and he puts two and two together. If I can’t convince you to tell the truth, I’ll just have to do it myself.”
Good gawd. What a fool. Didn’t he ever go to the movies? Watch television? Rule No. 3b. Never threaten to go to the cops, particularly if you’re planning to.
But Liz seemed not to have heard. “I thought you’d help her, you jerk. Instead, you said you’d take her to the hospital. Anybody could have taken her to the hospital, for Christ’s sake. You’re totally useless. You could have stopped the bleeding, but you didn’t even turn a hand.”
“I didn’t have the right equipment, Liz. Katie was hemorrhaging. She was in shock. She needed an ambulance and IVs, probably surgery, not aspirin and a Band-Aid from an inexperienced medical student. I did what I could to help her until you started waving that gun around.”
“Gun?” She said it dreamily, as if it were a new word and she had just heard it for the first time. In a deceptively quick move Liz was behind Hal’s desk. She wrenched open the top left-hand drawer and pulled out a small handgun, holding it as if she knew what she was doing. “A gun like this, Frankie?” She aimed the barrel at him and held the gun steady, a malicious smile spreading across her face. Hal hurried forward but once again did not intervene.
Liz patted the open drawer with her free hand. “Hal, Hal. What a creature of habit you are!”
“Don’t do it, Liz. This time there’s no way it can be passed off as an accident. This time it’ll be cold-blooded murder.”
“And it wasn’t murder before? I was just pointing the gun at this witless wonder here. I didn’t intend to shoot anybody. If he hadn’t jumped me, the gun would never have gone off. Katie would still be alive.” The gun under discussion was now pointed squarely at the doctor’s chest.
Dr. Chase began desperate bargaining. “It’s simple. We do what we should have done in the first place. Explain to the police that Katie’s death was accidental.”
“Ha!” Liz snorted. “You wish.” Her derisive laugh was too big for the room. It rolled through the open window and drifted over the water. She held the gun on both men now, swinging it back and forth in the space between them.
Suddenly Connie was no longer beside me. “I’m calling nine-one-one,” she whispered, and disappeared into the darkness behind the Dumpster. I willed her to hurry. I willed Liz to come to her senses. For several long minutes it seemed as if nobody moved inside the marina office. I prayed they would stay that way, but it was inevitable. Somebody would blink.
“This is bullshit!” Dr. Chase did an about-face and headed in my direction, toward the door. He wore the same clothes I had seen him wearing earlier that day, although he appeared to have shrunk within them so that his jacket hung loosely from his shoulders.
I was noticing how much the man had aged in the past twenty-four hours when his eyes suddenly widened in surprise and his glasses flew off. I heard a pop! Liz’s hand jerked upward, and I couldn’t see Frank Chase anymore.
“Shit!” I sprang up and dashed after Connie but bumbled into the recycling cans, knocking one sideways. The lid slid off, and I dived for it but missed. I watched helplessly as it clattered to the ground, shattering the night air like the cymbals at the end of the 1812 Overture. There was no chance Liz hadn’t heard. A rectangle of light blazed across the dock as someone threw open the office door. I struggled to my feet and scampered into the dark.
I found Connie on the other side of the Ships Store, just reaching for the phone. “They’ve shot Frank!”
Connie took a step toward the dock, then reversed direction. “The car!” she shouted. We raced for the parking lot, but as we rounded the corner of the building, I saw Liz thundering in our direction, waving the gun.
“The boat, Hannah. Head for the boat!” We turned around and ran like frightened rabbits toward the safety of Sea Song, with the dock bucking and heaving beneath our feet.
17
Connie flew down the dock ahead of me, her shirt a strobe in the darkness, reflecting white from each dock light as she raced by. I sprinted after her thinking, thank God I’d worn sensible shoes. I had no clue what Connie had in mind. Was she planning to call for help on the ship’s radio? Was she hoping to make a getaway on the boat? Was she trying to reach the flare gun or another weapon so we could even up the odds? In a minute I would know.
Gasping for breath and still running flat out, I sneaked a glance over my shoulder. Liz had reached the dock and was clattering toward me in her high heels with Hal just a few feet behind. I couldn’t tell whether Hal was chasing us or trying to catch up with Liz, who was charging down the dock, still dressed for success, bellowing like an enraged bull. I decided not to hang around and find out. If Hal turned out to be a friend, rather than a foe, maybe we could all have a good laugh about it later.
About halfway down the dock I clipped my thigh on something solid, a wheeled cart left there by a thoughtless boater after he’d schlepped his supplies out to his vessel. Silently blessing the guy, whoever he was, I paused just long enough to drag it into the center of the dock, hoping it wouldn’t be visible there in the dark between dock lights. Three slips farther down I did the same with a coil of hose.
I didn’t have to turn around to know I’d hit the mark. Liz shrieked in pain as she collided heavily with the cart. I heard a thud and felt the vibration under my feet as her body hit the floating dock, followed by, mercifully, the skitter of her gun along the wooden planks. “Shit, shit, shit!” Her voice pierced the night air, whiny and shrill.
“What’d you do with the damn gun?” Hal seemed utterly calm as if he were asking what she’d done with the car keys. Something big splashed into the water. I hoped it was Liz. But when I heard her voice again, complaining to Hal about his inability to maintain a decently lit marina, I figured one of them must have shoved the push cart into the drink.
“It’s here somewhere, you moron. It didn’t fall in the water. I would have heard it.”
“Which direction did it go? I can’t see a damn thing with your big butt in the way.”
“Never mind. I’ve got it,” Liz crowed.
I would have known this in any case because the dock resumed its pitching and rolling.
The minute I reached Sea Song, I stooped to untie the line holding her to the dock. Connie crouched in Sea Song’s cockpit, trying to start the engine. “Never mind that, Hannah! Get up on the bow. Untie the lines from there!” The engine roared to life, drowning her next words, so when I didn’t move right away, Connie screamed, “Get the bow lines!”
I scrambled aboard and gained valuable seconds when pained howls told me Hal had rendezvoused with the coiled hose. The port line came easily undone, and I had turned to work, thumb-handed, on the starboard line when Hal leaped aboard. The line was jammed under the anchor chain, and as I struggled to free it, he grabbed me around the waist from behind, yanked me close, and with his mouth touching my ear growled, “You can forget about it, Hannah!”
This instantly erased all doubt about whose side he was on.