It seemed that way until they were a mile from the inn at least, and then the wind swung around fast and sudden and drove the clouds up over them, and the sun was hidden again and the path to the Cypress House was bathed in shadow. An armadillo waddled along the dirt road, indifferent to the truck that nearly ended its life. They broke out of the trees and the inn came into view, the sea beyond it caught between light and dark beneath the shifting cloud front. Owen’s convertible was parked where it had been when they left, and there was no sign of visitors. Everything looked calm.
“What time is it?” Rebecca asked.
“Nearly noon.”
“And the boat’s supposed to come in after dark. Around nine is what Owen said.”
“Right.”
“So we’ve got one afternoon left,” she said as they stepped out of the truck and faced the inn. “That may be it. That may truly be the last time I spend here.”
She stood on the hill and looked down at the inn as the sky continued to darken and the wind pushed the Cypress House sign back and forth on creaking hinges. A pair of gulls shrieked as they flew over the roof and then vanished down toward the beach, where a large wave blew in with a cloud of spray and an angry snarl.
“I won’t miss it,” she said. “Not one bit.”
“We’ll get you to Maine,” Arlen said. “I promise.”
She smiled faintly and took his hand and squeezed it, and then they walked down to the inn together. Up the front steps as the sign continued its rhythmic creaking, like a porch swing on a hazy summer afternoon in some sleepy, happy town, and then they were through the door and into the barroom. Arlen was carrying the money bag. The lights were off and it was dark with the sudden cloud cover, and Rebecca called, “Owen? Paul?” as they came in. Arlen closed the door behind them. The latch had just clicked when she screamed.
He’d had his eyes down, but now he raised them. Looked across the room and through the windows to the back porch. Saw Owen Cady’s body dangling in the wind, upside down, a wide dark gash torn through the center of his throat.
48
THERE WAS A ROPE knotted around his ankles, holding his feet together, secured to someplace on the roof. Probably the widow’s walk. His hair hung straight down, matted here and there with blood. There were also streaks of blood tracing his jaw and lining his face. Either the wound had been very fresh when they’d hung him up or they’d cut his throat with him in that position.
Rebecca screamed again, calling out his name this time in an anguished howl, and then she ran for the porch. Arlen grabbed at her arm and missed, and then he dropped the bag of cash and followed as she burst through the back door. The wind pushed her brother’s corpse closer to her before his weight swung it away again, a gentle pendulum motion. She said Owen, this time so soft it could scarcely be heard, and then dropped to her knees on the porch.
Arlen knelt and held her in silence, thinking, Paul, where is Paul? as the body swung back and forth and Owen Cady’s blood dried in his hair, an occasional drip still plinking off the floorboards, where a pool of it had gathered.
“Get inside,” he said, looking away from the corpse and out to the open beach and realizing for the first time how exposed they were. “Come on.”
She was unresponsive but didn’t fight him. He tugged her inside and let her go again, and she slumped back to the floor. He let her drop, looking around the room and seeing now what he hadn’t at first, when the body occupied all of his focus-a single chair turned over, a broken glass, two gashes in the front wall surely left by bullets.
The gun was still in the truck. He said, “Wait here, Rebecca, please wait,” and then ran across the room and through the door and out to the truck. When he had the gun in his hand, he closed the door and straightened slowly, took a long, panning gaze around him. It was a different sort of look than he’d given in many years, a battlefield survey, everything significant now and everything potentially threatening. All around the Cypress House, it was quiet but for the wind and the gulls and the creaking of the sign.
He shouted, “Paul!”
Silence.
“Paul!”
Silence.
“Damn them,” he said, and his voice shook a little now. “Damn them.”
He went back through the yard and inside the house. Rebecca was still on the floor, but now she’d lifted her hands to cover her face. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.
“What?” Arlen said.
“Get him down,” she said, and this time he heard it through the sobs. “Please get him down.”
He laid his hand on her back. “Rebecca, we’ve got to get out of-”
“Get him down!”
He straightened. “All right.” Logic screamed at him to get her the hell away from here immediately, back to Barrett before the bastards who’d done this showed up again, but instinct told him they were gone now and wouldn’t be coming back. Where was Paul, though?
“We can’t leave him like that,” Rebecca said, not looking up, her voice heavy with tears. “We can’t.”
“I’m going for him,” Arlen said.
He stepped out onto the porch and gave the beach another one of those slow, panning stares, saw nothing but sand and shells and water. Just as it always had been. There were no indentations in the beach where a boat had been put in. Anyone coming from the water would have used the inlet.
He stepped over to the dangling corpse, taking care to avoid the blood, and dragged a porch chair behind him. Then he climbed onto it and took hold of Owen’s legs, making sure to keep his eyes on the shoes and not look down into the poor dead kid’s face.
I didn’t see it in you, he thought. I’m sorry. It wasn’t there this morning. Something changed after we left. I couldn’t have warned you. I wish I could have, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.
He was thinking this as he took a firm hold of Owen’s legs and drew his pocketknife out. At the touch of the dead body, he thought of Paul Brickhill and said, in a whisper, “I’m coming for you, Paul. I don’t know if there’s time left, but I’m coming for you.”
He lifted the knife to the rope as he said the words, and when the response came he nearly sawed through his own finger.
There’s time.
Two words, spoken right in his ear, right inside his damned head. He stumbled and fell from the chair, upending it. The gun was on the porch rail, and he snatched it up.
Nothing but silence now. Those two words only a memory. He turned and pointed the gun in first one direction and then the other, still backing away from the body, and saw nothing, heard nothing.
It had been Owen’s voice.
“No,” Arlen said softly. “No, it wasn’t.”
But it was.
For a moment he was frozen there, but then the sound of Rebecca’s sobbing from inside shook him loose, and he stepped up to the body again. This time he didn’t touch Owen’s legs but reached higher on the rope. He grasped the lower portion of the cord with his left hand and sawed away above it with his right, and eventually the rope parted and the body was deadweight tugging his arm down. He let him go as gently as he could, laid him on the porch in his own blood. Then he picked up the gun again and went back inside.
“He’s down,” he said gently, kneeling beside Rebecca and lifting her face so he could see her eyes. He regretted it as soon as he got a glimpse of the terrible pain trapped in them. “He’s resting easy now, okay? But I’ve got to go have a look around. I’ve got to see…”