Aaron Elkins: Dead men’s hearts

He gripped the tire iron. Flung end-over-end it would be a wicked missile, easily capable of cracking Forrest’s skull. But one try was all he was going to get, and he wasn’t close enough yet. He crept onward, freezing when Forrest straightened up. But the director, unwaveringly confident, didn’t bother looking behind him. Instead, he settled down into a more stable position on one knee and brought the rifle forward, propping his left arm on one of the rocks and adjusting his aim. Gideon began moving again.

Forrest took off his hat, wiped his forehead with his fingers and put the hat on again. He sighted along the rifle, swung out the handle of the bolt and slipped it smoothly back and forward, chambering a new cartridge with a well-oiled click. Gideon picked up his pace. Julie wasn’t visible through the windows, but even a chance shot through the floor of the upturned van could easily hit her.

But Forrest wasn’t settling for chance shots; he seemed to be taking careful aim, repositioning his torso, shifting his elbow, getting his orientation just right. Standing on the rim now, behind and above him, Gideon could sight down the barrel at almost the same angle that Forrest had. He seemed to be aiming at a place just forward of the rear axle, at The gas tank. The sonofabitch was trying to “No!” Gideon yelled, heaving the iron at the white hat. With almost the same motion he launched himself after it. It was a long jump and he put into it everything that he had against Forrest: the heat, the pain, the fear, the blood in his mouth, the hammering in his chest. And above all, above everything, Julie. He plunged from the rim like an avenging angel, arms outstretched, fingers reaching.

The iron missed its mark by three feet, zinging end-over-end above Forrest’s head and out into the canyon.

Gideon missed by two.

He fell short, coming down in a sprawling three-point landing on one hand and both feet, his momentum carrying him into Forrest, or rather into Forrest’s rifle. At Gideon’s shout Forrest had spun to his feet and tried to bring the gun to bear on the howling thing falling out of the sky on him. But he hadn’t been fast enough. The barrel of the weapon, still being swung around, smacked Gideon hard in the ribs below his left arm. With a grunt he clamped his arm down on it, then got his other hand around it too, a few inches further up the barrel, butted up against Forrest’s left hand. He shifted to get a grip with both hands and pulled.

Forrest hung on, staggering momentarily before he set himself. They stood, straining and glaring at each other with their faces a couple of feet apart, like fencers with crossed swords. The tire iron clanged distantly on the rocks below. Forrest’s face was scarlet from the strain, his cheeks distended. The tendons in his neck were popping. Gideon supposed he looked about the same.

“This is crazy, Forrest,” he said through clenched jaws. “Don’t make it worse on yourself… let go.”

Forrest kicked him in the hip with a size-twelve, lug-soled desert boot. Gideon stumbled backward over a rock and went down onto the seat of his pants, clinging to the barrel with his left hand and twisting furiously to keep the muzzle pointed away from him.

Forrest kicked at him again, catching him under the arm and tugging on the rifle at the same time. Flinching with pain and dragged over the stones by the heavier Forrest, Gideon held grimly on, forcing the muzzle to the side. Letting go would be the end of everything, for him and for Julie. The bullet was in the chamber, the gun was cocked, and Forrest’s finger was on the trigger. A quick, simple squeeze was all it would take for Gideon’s death. Julie’s wouldn’t be long in following.

Somehow he managed to scramble to his feet again, helped inadvertently by Forrest’s hauling on the rifle. But although he got his other hand on the gun again, his grip had slipped down almost to the muzzle. If not for the metal tag of the front sight, digging agonizingly into the fleshy heel of his hand, he would have lost hold altogether. He was winded now; that last kick had taken something out of him, and Forrest’s greater weight was grinding him down as the larger man continued to wrench at the rifle. His arms had begun to tremble. His fingers were wooden.

Why, I might lose, he thought dully. This man might actually kill me, kill Julie.

Forrest was fresher. Forrest was heavier. And Forrest had hold of the right end of the gun.

Breathing hard, Forrest seemed to sense a weakening. “God… damn… you,” he croaked, his broad back arched with the strain, his nostrils flaring, “let-”

Gideon let go.

Forrest flew back like a man shot out of a cannon. There was no cry or curse, no futile scrambling for balance, no expression of horror. His eyes, fixed on Gideon’s, showed only a dawning surprise. His mouth remained as it was, formed for the “g” in “go.” Two quick, stumbling backward steps and over the edge he went.

Over the edge and down, not in the parabolic arc that Gideon anticipated but down, like a safe falling out of a window. A moment later, out of sight, the rifle went off, mercifully overriding the sound that Gideon was listening for but trying not to hear. On his knees he edged to the rim and looked over in time to see Forrest sliding limply to the sand from the inclined top of a ten-foot-high boulder. The lolling neck, the impossible position in which his head came to rest, made it amply clear that the craniospinal junction had been severed.

So it was over. About Forrest he felt nothing; no triumph, no misgivings about taking a life, no soul-searching over whether there might have been a better way. Already he wasn’t sure if he’d meant for Forrest to plummet over the edge when he let go or if he’d just been trying to gain the advantage.

Either way, he didn’t much care. It was done, that was all, and he was alive and Julie was alive. Wearily, he wiped his hands on his pants.

Twenty yards away from Forrest the white Panama hat with its red band spiraled gently to the canyon floor.

“Fascinating,” opined Rupert Armstrong LeMoyne. “An incredible story, just fascinating.” He shook his head, staring into the softly crackling log blaze. To the side of the brick fireplace, beyond the windows of the faculty club’s cozy bar a few spatters of gray, early-January snow, probably the last of the winter, swirled dismally over a murky Lake Washington.

“But why in the world,” he continued after a reflective sip of white wine, “would this Forrest Freeman person want to kill you?”

“Obviously, that’s something nobody’s ever going to know for sure,” Gideon said. “My guess is that he heard about my offer of $40,000 and thought it was for real; that I was actually after that statuette. I suppose he thought I was bent. Like him.”

“Mm, yes, I see. That makes sense.”

As far as it went, Gideon thought. But what could Forrest have thought his motivation was? Gideon, after all, didn’t have the corresponding inlays or head, so why would he have been so ready to shell out $40,000 for a sandstone body that wasn’t much of anything in itself? But maybe Forrest hadn’t worried about motivation. From his point of view, the fact was that Gideon was doing it, whatever the reason, and that was enough.

“No,” Julie said, turning from her own contemplation of the fire, “I can’t imagine anybody seeing you as a crook. You’re too straight-arrow. I think that business with Hassan made Forrest realize that you were on to him, or about to be.”

“Yes, that makes sense too,” said the agreeable Rupert.

“Either way,” Julie said, “you obviously had to go. Unfortunately, since I was with you at the time, I had to go too.”