Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“I’m worried you’re going to get in over your head on this,” she said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m not your problem.”

I turned to go but she took my hand. I couldn’t look at her. From the moment Cline had offered to tell me exactly what had happened to Siobhan, to lay out for me the awful truth I’d been denying all this time, my nerves had been frayed. I didn’t want to think about Siobhan. I didn’t want to think about Marni. I didn’t want to acknowledge the heavy desire now in my chest to hold Susan in my arms, to feel her hands on my neck, her lips on mine. Fighting back against it all seemed the only safe course of action. But then, without realizing it, I let her put her hand on my cheek. She was so close I could smell her sweet breath.

“Bill,” she pleaded, “just don’t—”

“I can’t do this,” I said. I pulled away and went inside.

Angelica was on the couch in the living room under the windows, one arm in a sling and the other lying across her forehead like she’d fainted; her left index finger was splinted. I went into the kitchen and stood at the window, felt Susan’s presence without turning to look at her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. I gripped the edge of the sink.

“I have a plan,” I said. “But a part of me wants to throw it in. I keep thinking about just driving to Cline’s house, dragging him down the stairs by his shirt, and kicking the shit out of him on his own lawn.”

She was silent. The malice in my voice was frightening, even to me. Another being was speaking from a dark place in my mind. It was loss that did this to me, forced me down into my own deepest, most evil recesses.

“You’re not that dumb.”

“Oh, I can be pretty dumb,” I smirked. I heard a thunk from upstairs, which I ignored. I turned to her. I wanted to tell Susan that I’d done this before. That I’d let the badness take me, stupid and filled with rage, and I both did and didn’t regret what I had done. But the phone rang in my pocket, drawing us both out of ourselves. I answered without looking at the caller ID.

“Bill,” someone said. A voice I hadn’t heard in over two years. “It’s Malone.”

I barely managed to respond. “What do you … this is not a good time.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” he said. “But I don’t think we have a choice. I’m a hundred yards from your house, and a black woman on the second floor has got me pinned with a big fuck-off rifle. She just blew a hole the size of a dinner plate in the tree right next to me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

EFFIE WAS SITTING on a wooden stool at the window, her eye on the scope and her finger on the trigger of a rifle even bigger than the one I’d pulled off Nick the other night. The silencer on it was as thick as my arm, which accounted for the thunk I’d heard when she’d fired a warning shot at my former partner. Effie turned and looked at me as I entered the bare room, then made a couple of signs I recognized from raid training I’d done as a young patrolman.

One target. Hundred yards.

“Does everybody in this goddamn house have an enormous rifle under the bed except me?” I asked. Effie looked like she was mentally reviewing the number of guests with large guns under their beds. I moved toward her, stopped when I noticed a tiny brown lump on the bedspread. The rat was sleeping, curled up in a ball like a cat, its pink tail tucked around its body. I knelt beside Effie and looked through the scope. Jerry Malone was indeed standing frozen in the forest, his hands out from his sides like he was prepared to either raise them or jump for cover if another shot came. He’d dropped the phone, probably not wanting to push his luck any further. There was a hole in the tree right next to him large enough for a man to put his head through. The scope of the rifle was so big I could see the individual splinters of wood from the shot that had fallen on his shoulder.

“He’s an old buddy,” I told Effie.

She rolled her eyes and threw her hands up. Now you tell me .

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE MALONE I approached in the forest in front of my house was much thinner and paler than the one I’d seen outside the commissioner’s office in Boston. He’d grown a beard, but the dark hair only accentuated the rings under his eyes. I stopped ten feet away, saving us both the awkward silent negotiation about whether to shake hands.

“Great place.” Malone nodded at the house. “Security system is a bit extreme, maybe.”

“I’m having some troubles with the locals,” I said. “Someone decided to use the house for target practice a couple of days ago. I’m expecting a slide in short-term rentals.”

I wasn’t showing any warmth, not in my body language or the tone of my voice, but I recognized that I wanted to. Despite what happened in Boston, what prevailed were the good memories of me and Malone catching babies falling off balconies and running through back alleys chasing thieves, sitting on the dock after the shift and watching the boats come in, talking about our wives and our houses, how lucky we were. He brushed the wood splinters off his shoulder and looked me in the eye for the first time since I’d approached.

“I know it was the anniversary of Siobhan the other day,” he said. “It got me thinking … ” He couldn’t find the words, shrugged. I understood. I crossed the no-man’s-land between us and hugged him, slapped his bony back. The walls crumbled like chalk. What we’d done seemed so long ago now, so unimportant. I felt him half laughing, half sobbing with relief.

“Come inside.” I led him toward the house, my arm around his shoulders.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be a quick trip into town, but Effie knew that nothing was quick when Angelica was involved. The two had jumped in the car after Bill’s friend Malone arrived to go get some supplies for a barbecue, but Angelica was treating the trip as an opportunity for some kind of philosophical lecture about writing. From the bright lights of the Stop and Shop, down the hill past the whale-watching and tourism stretch, and into the café on the edge of Harbor Cove, Angelica had droned on. Effie window-shopped, took in the sea air, and generally ignored her partner. Gloucester was settling down for the evening, pink light falling softly on the storm-blue sea. Angelica ordered coffees for the two of them, hardly pausing in her oration to address the waitress. A group of men came in and took the booth directly behind Angelica, big men who settled themselves loudly in the leather seats.

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t understand how the archetype of the muse has survived unaltered for as long as it has,” Angelica said. She didn’t wait for any gesture of an answer from Effie. “It diminishes the author’s accountability for the successes and failures of the written work, and besides that, it banishes the creative act to the realm of the spiritual conduit, and— oh my God !”

Effie had been staring out at the harbor light but she snapped back toward Angelica, who was sitting bolt upright in her chair like she had been zapped. Effie put her palms up— What? —but Angelica flapped her hands at her.

“Shh, shh!” Angelica said. “Be quiet.”

Effie sighed.

“These guys,” Angelica whispered, leaning forward and adjusting her sling, “in the booth behind me. They just mentioned Mitchell Cline.”

Effie discreetly leaned out of her seat, but all she could see were broad shoulders barely contained in expensive fabric. She pointed at her ear, the guys in the booth.

You heard them?

“I was eavesdropping,” Angelica whispered. “I’m terrible, I know. I listen to everyone. It’s in the writer’s tool kit. C. S. Lewis compared eavesdropping to spying on people by magic. See? More elitist mysticism.”