Charlaine Harris - Real Murders

Suddenly the fight oozed out of them. They looked like what they used to be, for a moment; a bank loan officer and a secretary, who could not remember where they were or how they had come to be there. The scarf fell from Bankston’s hand. Melanie lay down the golf club. They did not look at each other anymore.

There was a gust of people noise, and Arthur and Lynn Liggett came pelting down the stairs to be stopped short by the tableau.

Phillip’s breath came out from behind the gag in a deep sigh, and he fainted. It seemed like such a good idea that I did it, too.

“If I’d had my Dynamite Man Particle Blaster they wouldn’t have hurt us,” Phillip whispered. He simply would not be parted from me while I was being patched up. He held on to my hand or my leg or my torso; though many kind people offered to take him and rock him, or buy him an ice cream cone, or color with him, my little brother would not be separated from me. This definitely made it harder on me, but I tried to have so much sympathy for Phillip that the pain would not seem important. I’m afraid I found that to me, pain is very important, no matter who else has been hurt.

Now he was actually in the hospital bed with me, huddling as close to me as he could get, his eyes still wide and staring, but beginning to glaze over. I thought he’d had some kind of mild tranquilizer; I thought I remembered saying that was okay. My father and stepmother were driving back from Chattanooga; Robin, bless him, had found their phone number and called, miraculously catching them in their motel room.

“Phillip, if I hadn’t had you to hold on to, I would have gone nuts,” I assured him. “You were so brave. I know you were scared inside, like I was, but you were brave as a lion to hold yourself together.”

“I was thinking about escaping all the time. I was just waiting for a chance,” he informed me. There, he was beginning to sound more like Phillip. Then, less certainly, “Roe, would they really have killed us?”

What was I supposed to say? I glanced over at Robin, who shrugged in an it’s-up-to-you gesture. Why was I asking Robin what I should say to my little brother?

“Yes,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Yes, they were really bad people. They were rotten apples. They were nice on the outside but full of worms on the inside.”

“But they’re locked up in jail now?”

“You bet.” I thought about lawyers and bail and I shivered. Surely not? “They can’t ever get you again. They can’t ever hurt anybody again. They’re far away and all locked up, and your mom and dad will carry you home even further away from them.”

“When are they gonna get here?” he asked desolately.

“Soon, soon, as fast as their car can come,” I said as soothingly as I could, perhaps for the fiftieth time, and thank God at that moment my father did come in, Betty Jo right behind him and under rigid control.

“Mama!” said Phillip, and all his hard-held toughness left him. He became an instant soggy puddle of little boy. Betty Jo swept him out of the hospital bed and into her arms and held him as tightly as he held her. “Where can I take him?” she asked the nurse who’d followed them in. The nurse told 4 her about an empty waiting room two doors down, and Betty Jo vanished with her precious armful. I was so glad to see Betty Jo take him I could have cried. There is no substitute for a real mother. At least I am no substitute for a real mother. The past few hours had certainly taught me that, if I’d ever doubted it.

My father bent and kissed me. “I hear you saved his life,” he said, and tears trickled down his face. I had never seen my father cry. “I am so thankful you are both safe, I prayed in the car all the way here. I could have lost both of you in one night.” Overwhelmed, he sank into the guest chair Robin had quietly vacated. Robin stood back in the shadows, the dim room light glinting off his red hair. I would never forget how he’d looked with the shotgun in his hands.

I was just too tired to appreciate my father’s emotion. It was late, so late. I had almost been strangled by a bank loan officer with a green silk scarf. I had been hit by a secretary with a golf club. I had been terrified out of my mind for myself and my little brother. I had looked into the face of evil. Strong words, I told myself hazily, but true. The face of evil.

Finally, my dear father dried his eyes, told me he’d see me very soon, and said they were taking Phillip home that very night. “We’ll have to see about treatment for him,” he said apprehensively. “I don’t know how to help him.”

“I’ll see you,” I mumbled.

“Thanks, Aurora,” he said. “If you need help yourself, you know how to reach us.” But they were dying to get Phillip away, and his voice verged on perfunctory. I was a grownup, right? I could take care of myself. Or my mother would take care of me. I let myself have a flash of bitterness, and made myself swallow it. He was not being careful of me, but he was right.

I drifted off to sleep for a second. Robin was holding my hand when I woke up. I think he had kissed me.

“That felt good,” I said. So he did it again. It felt even better.

“They were stupid really,” I said a little later.

“When you think about it, yes,” Robin agreed. “I don’t think they ever realized it wasn’t a game when they began patterning the deaths after old murders. Bankston snatched Phillip on impulse when they should have waited and picked a victim from at least across town… if he’d really been intelligent, he would have known taking Phillip from the same place he himself lived, then keeping him in the townhouse instead of getting him out to Melanie’s place… well, maybe they would’ve smuggled him out, but you started looking too soon, and they didn’t even consider you having keys.”

“How did you know where we were?” I asked. It had never occurred to me to question our last-minute rescue.

“When I saw Melanie pull back in, she acted strange,” he began. “I had started to wonder where you’d disappeared, too, and her coming back after she’d just left a few minutes before seemed peculiar. She’d gone home to get her tape recorder, you know,” he said, and looked away into the shadows of the room. “I ran around front I saw you weren’t there searching, and decided there was only one place you could be. Really, I was just guessing,” he said frankly. “You had disappeared as suddenly as Phillip, there were no strange cars around, Melanie tried to act concerned about Phillip being missing but she wasn’t, and she had that damn tape recorder. Perry Allison is very strange and maybe dangerous, but he’s also obvious.” Robin reached down to take my hand. “I had to persuade Mr. Crandall in a hurry that we had to raid Bankston’s place, but he was game. Even if I had made a mistake, he said, if Bankston was any kind of a man he would realize when a child and woman are missing, anything goes. Jed’s a frontier kind of guy.”

“How’d you get in? Didn’t Melanie lock the door behind her?”

“Yes, but Mrs. Crandall had a key, the key she’d been meaning to bring over to you-I think she kept it because the former tenant used to lock herself out a lot.”

I would have laughed if my side hadn’t hurt so much. The emergency room doctor said I’d be able to go home in the next day or two, but my collarbone and two ribs were broken and I was bruised all over from tumbling down the stairs. There was a spectacularly ugly combination of bruise and scrape covering one cheek.

My mother wanted me to come home with her, but I was going to tell her I’d rather be in my own place, I decided, depending on how sore I was in the morning. Mother had flown into the hospital with every eyelash in place but a wild look in those fine eyes. We had hugged and talked for a while, and she had even shed a few tears (certainly atypical), but when she learned that as far as I knew my apartment was sitting wide open and, for that matter, Bankston’s as well since the police were still searching it, she decided I was well enough to leave and flew off to see to safeguarding my property and the disposition of Bankston’s.