Russell Banks - The Reserve

The guide didn’t move, except to pick up the fallen shotgun. He broke it open, removed and automatically pocketed the empty shells, and looked down the barrels. “This’s going to hurt me, you know,” he said. “Accident or not. People talk.” He snapped the shotgun shut and hefted it in his hands, noting its balance. It was a custom-made Belgian.28 gauge. Worth at least a thousand dollars, Hubert thought. He said to Jordan, “Word’ll get out. People will know that the wife of one of my best clients got herself killed by her own gun in my presence. In my care. Guides are supposed to make sure things like this don’t happen.”

“We don’t have a choice. Anyhow, it’ll blow over eventually. People talk, but they forget, too.”

“I’m a guide, Jordan. Word’ll get out. Someone in my care got herself shot, and it might even look like I shot her myself. Wouldn’t matter that it was an accident. Look, this is a serious problem for me. You don’t understand, Jordan, it’s the only living I got,” he said, then added, almost as an afterthought, “Vanessa says nobody knows her mother is even up here. Except me. And now you. And you, you’re setting up to say you weren’t even here this morning.”

“What about Kendall? He must know.”

“Yes, but he thinks it was of her own free will that she came in to the camp. He wouldn’t check on whether she’s still here or left already for New York City. Vanessa could drive off and say she took her mother with her, and nobody’d be the wiser.”

Jordan held the boat by the gunnel and looked back at the man. Was he serious? Was he really going along with her? Had that been their plan all along? It slowly dawned on Jordan that Vanessa and Hubert might have been working together from the beginning, and not only had they been sleeping together, they had also been trying to scare Mrs. Cole into releasing Vanessa’s inheritance — and when she agreed to that, they would murder the woman. Maybe they planned to make it look as if she’d died of natural causes, smother her with a pillow or something, or drown her in the lake and just say she went swimming and never came back. Vanessa probably promised Hubert more money than he’d ever imagined making in a lifetime. The artist’s unexpected arrival this morning had stymied their plan, or at least complicated it. And then Mrs. Cole found her husband’s shotgun. And now she was dead, but not of natural causes. Explainable, though. An accidental shooting.

Jordan looked up the slope toward the house and saw Vanessa coming from the toolshed carrying a long-handled spade and a pickax. “C’mon, Hubert,” the artist said, “help me put the body in the boat and shove off. For Christ’s sake, hurry!”

“No. We can’t do that. Not without Vanessa’s permission. It’s her mother.”

“I don’t know what kind of spell she’s put on you, man, but I’m not waiting for her permission.” Jordan let the boat float a few feet from shore. Moving fast, he got his arms under the woman’s body and lifted it and carried it to the boat and gently laid it in the bow. He put the oars into the boat and looked down and saw blood smeared across the front of his shirt. “Damn!” he said.

He grabbed the guide by the shoulder and shoved him in the direction of the boat. The man didn’t move. “Hubert, get in the goddamned boat, and start rowing!” Again Jordan shoved him, but Hubert stood rooted to the ground, still holding the shotgun loosely in one hand.

From fifty yards off, Vanessa saw the boat bobbing in the water and her mother’s body in the boat, saw the bloodstains on Jordan’s white shirt and Hubert with the gun, and started to run toward them. “Stop! You can’t take her, Jordan! You can’t!” she cried. Dropping the tools at the shore, she ran knee deep into the water. She pushed Jordan aside, grabbed the boat, and drew it halfway back onto dry land.

Jordan said, “Let Hubert take her in and report it. It was an accident, Vanessa. That’s all. You’ve got to report it, Vanessa.”

“No! No one will believe me! Don’t you understand? People will think I did it! The police, everyone, they’ll all blame me. Because of…because of what she was doing to me. And what I’ve done to her.” Vanessa was panting, her eyes darting from one man to the other. “She was sending me away, back to that mental hospital, Jordan. And my grandparents’ trust and my inheritance from Daddy, she took them, Jordan. So not only am I certified crazy, I’ve got a motive. Motive, opportunity, and means, Jordan. Plus crazy.”

“No one has to know about that,” he said.

“It’s all documented, Jordan. They made me sign the papers, my mother and her lawyer.”

“I meant, what you were doing to her. Out here. No one has to know that. It takes away motive, at least. And craziness.”

“We can swear it was an accident,” Hubert said. “Because it’s the truth. We’ll swear we were here and we saw it.”

Jordan turned to him in surprise. “You can say you were here and you saw it. Not me. As soon as I can, I’m flying out of here. You and Vanessa can claim it happened any damned way you want.”

Vanessa looked at the two men as if they were boys and simply did not understand the ways of adults. “If they don’t believe me, and they won’t, what makes you think they’ll believe you, Hubert? Or you, Jordan? If I have to, to protect myself, I’ll say you both were witnesses. But it won’t matter, no one will believe you, either. They’ll just think you’re both covering for me. The famously philandering artist and the lonely widower of the woods, they’ll think you’re both in love with me. Or at least were sleeping with me. They’ll say I worked my wiles on you. Oh, and will you tell the sheriff why Mother had the gun in the first place, Hubert? Will you say she got the drop on you when you went to make sure she was still safely locked away in the bedroom? You could go to jail for that alone, you know. Aiding and abetting a kidnapper. Or maybe I’ll just claim you did it, Hubert. All on your own. You shot her because you’re so in love with me, you big hunk of a man, and in your own love-struck way were only trying to free me from my mother’s nefarious intention of tossing me in the loony bin and spending all my money. Which would be better spent on you, right? I mean, look, your fingerprints are all over Daddy’s gun! And poor little me, I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Or maybe I’ll say you two were out here early in the morning, fighting, because Hubert’s been sleeping with your sweet wife, Jordan, and Mother tried to stop you—”

“Jesus, Vanessa,” Jordan said. “Stop.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t do it.” She smiled wanly at Hubert, then at Jordan. “But seriously, whatever you say or I say happened, no one’s going to believe us. Unless I confess that, yes, I shot my mother, and you’re only covering up for me. People will believe that story easily enough. But no matter what story they believe, someone’s going to jail for this mess. Me, for sure. But maybe you, too, Hubert St. Germain. Possibly even you, Jordan Groves. Because no one’s going to believe it was an accident. And in a way, it wasn’t, was it?” She looked down at her mother’s body in the boat. “Oh, God, she’s really dead, isn’t she? This isn’t a dream, is it?”

“No,” Jordan said. “It’s real, Vanessa. That’s why we can’t lie about it. Regardless of the consequences.”

Vanessa said, “You don’t mind lying about your being out here, though. Do you?”

“That’s…that’s different.”

“The main difference being you can get away with it.”

“I’m thinking maybe we should take the body in and report it,” Hubert said. “I’m thinking maybe Jordan’s right.”