Randy White - Black Widow

Shay didn’t know about Michael’s aunt, Isabelle Toussaint. That was okay. Shay had already made her decision. She’d figured it out on her own. I smiled. I admired the girl’s unemotional approach. I’d assembled her caricature to mirror my own conceits.

Shay reached, pressed her breasts against my arm… then was amused when I jumped at what sounded like a distant gunshot.

“It’s only fireworks,” she told me. “Must be a holiday or something.” She released my arm, and walked to the water’s edge where the sand looked gray at the lagoon’s black rim and where, two days before, I’d seen jellyfish adrift, and wrestled lobsters from a cave.

I watched her. I could see the glow of her cigarette. It strobed a nervous rhythm, out of place on this dark night with stars, and the steady percussion of waves beaching themselves outside the lagoon. After taking a last drag, she tossed the butt away without looking to see where it fell.

I joined her, and Shay turned to face me. Maybe it was the way she was dressed-jeans, shirt knotted at the belly button-or maybe it was the deceptive properties of tropical starlight, but Shay looked less like a business exec and more like the plain-faced teen I’d met years before. She stood looking up at me, her cheek still swollen from the accident, nose a little too thick, lips too thin, and a body that, at another time and place, might have radiated a buxom, Southern, pheromone sensuality. But not tonight.

I said, “You were going to tell me about Ritchie.”

Shay looked at the sand, nodded. “He killed Corey. That’s the way I’m thinking of it. And he did things to me that night in the swimming pool I didn’t tell you. Things he kept doing even when I told him to stop.”

I said, “You have every right to be mad. But we’re talking about tonight. How mad did you get?”

“I was telling you about this plan Beryl had-”

“Shay!” I took her hand and squeezed. “Stop evading. What happened? I know Ritchie tried to force you, I know you pretended to be interested, I know you two came here, to the beach. So, for the last time, where’s-”

“I brought a gun,” Shay interrupted, pulling away. She turned her back to me and looked at the sky where there were stars… and also a plane climbing skyward, green and white lights blinking.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey! That’s Eddie’s plane. I’m supposed to fly back to Saint Lucia with-”

“I’m taking you by boat,” I said. “You were telling me about the gun.”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s one of the good things about flying with Eddie. You can carry anything you want on a private plane. The gun, it made me feel safe when I was out here with Ritchie. He probably wondered where I got all the courage when I started screaming at him about Corey. I told him he was nothing but low-life trash, and how much I hate bullies. Then…”

I waited for a few seconds before I pressed, “And then…?” wondering if she was editing her story. She often did.

“And then I took out the gun and pointed it at Ritchie’s smug damn face. He tried to bullshit his way out of it. But when I pulled the hammer back, I wish you could’ve seen his expression. He was like, Jesus Christ, this woman’s got the balls to really do it. I told him, ‘Ritchie, you little prick, you’ve got five seconds to run.’ Then I started counting. And… that’s all that happened.”

I said, “What do you mean?” It was like we were in her convertible again, returning from the airport, the stories slippery in her mouth.

“I mean he ran-the coward. And so I… fired a couple of shots into the sand. To scare the hell out of him. Because of the fireworks, no one would’ve noticed.” She made a sound that resembled laughter. “Ritchie won’t be back, I promise you that.”

I looped my arm around her waist, then slid my hand up her ribs and rested it on her neck. The gun wasn’t in her pockets; wasn’t in a shoulder holster. I asked, “Are you telling me the truth about the gun?” Though I knew the answer.

Shay sighed-a mewing sound of nostalgia or amusement-a sound like that. “It was a little Blackhawk. 22. Daddy gave it to me when I was ten. I learned to shoot, Doc. I learned to pull the trigger. That’s a phrase Dexter used. It meant someone it came naturally to.”

I said, “Almost sounds like you miss the man.”

Shay thought that was funny. Said, “Hah!” and scratched at something on her arm. “I’ll despise him forever. But Daddy knew guns-that’s all I’m saying. Which is why it got so he distrusted me as much as I disliked him.”

I shook my head, confused. What?

“I told you I ran away from home?”

“Yeah?”

“That was a lie. I didn’t run away. Daddy made me leave. I may be the only person who ever scared Dexter Money. He was afraid I was gonna kill him, so one of us had to go.”

The girl looked up at me. “I was out here thinking about it. How would I feel if I’d really shot him-Ritchie. Would I have a guilty conscience? Or break down crying, or go screaming and yelling to Beryl, begging her to help me cover up what I’d done?”

I said, “What did you decide?”

Shay’s eyes brightened for an instant, a feral reaction to starlight. “I decided I wouldn’t do any of those things. If I killed trash like Ritchie, I guess I’d feel… indifferent. Does that sound cold-blooded, Doc?”

I cupped the back of Shay’s neck and pulled her close, so my lips were next to her ear. I said, “That asshole, Ritchie, stole my watch, Shanay. My old Rolex. Now… where’s his body?”

Back at the beach house, I found my belt near the pool, and the little Colt. 380, one round fired, the brass casing on the deck. I’d known it was no fireworks.

No blood trail. No Clovis. Beryl had missed. Or was it Senegal?

“Pulling the trigger isn’t the same as pulling the trigger,” Shay told me, huddled close for warmth, as we boated toward the lights of Saint Lucia.

She was cold and I was freezing. The wind had cut like a knife as Shay had stood guard on the beach, while I put Ritchie in the cave.

On a silver, squall-blustery morning, July 24th, I rode my bike to the Sanibel Post Office on Tarpon Bay Road, and found a familiar postal key in my box that opened a larger box, from which I extracted one bulky manila envelope. I also found one reinforced box, carefully wrapped, very thin-made for sending valuable papers or photographs.

The envelope was from Sir James Montbard, Bluestone, Saint Lucia. It would contain articles and proofs and copies of maps related to the man’s theory of Relentless Human Motion. Sir James wanted me to join him on an expedition to the mangrove jungles of Central America’s Caribbean Coast. “There are Olmec ruins there unknown to outsiders-protected for centuries by native Miskito Indians,” he had told me. “The few real Miskito, the traditional ones, are damn suspicious of interlopers. It would be useful to have you along-an extra hand, you might say.”

The Englishman had laughed when he said that.

“The final proof we’re looking for may well be there, somewhere among the vines and mosquitoes. It’s not a trip for the faint of heart. You’ve had some experience in that part of the world, haven’t you, old boy?”

“I’ve been there a few times, Hooker,” I’d told him, amused that his Relentless Motion theory was now “ours.”

Montbard said he’d finance the trip with his cut of the money I’d taken from Isabelle Toussaint’s safe.

The second package was from General Forensics Laboratories, White Plains, New York. Using infrared luminescence and digital enhancement imaging, experts there had reconstructed portions of the letter from the late Merlin Starkey, the letter that might reveal the name of my parents’ murderer.