Toby Olson - Tampico

“They all are,” I said.

“But I know something about that. His care with things. His document collection. He was quite meticulous. And he was an internist. That takes plenty of care, and reasoning too, often dealing with the unknown and surprising, much like flying a plane I think.”

“Did he have any patients at all here?”

“Oh, no. This was a getaway for him. He left that all behind, almost as if it were painful.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, I’m reasoning now,” Carlos said, lighting up a cigar. “I never heard him on the phone, nor saw him hold a book of that kind, though they were on the shelves. And when we talked it was about things far from that. He showed me how he’d plot courses to Mexico, and I told him details about woodworking. We talked about wine, something I’d picked up on the way. Nothing, ever, about medicine.”

And there were no women and no friends, and it was Carlos who did most of the food shopping, and though occasionally they went to restaurants in Provincetown, they went early and to quiet places. It was reading in the evenings, and quiet music, and the manuscript collection. And it was early to bed and early to rise and Gordon Strickland sitting on the deck in robe and slippers, drinking coffee, a book in his lap. Then it was Strickland flying to Philadelphia for a week or two, then coming back for a few days, then leaving again.

“I studied up on AIDS,” Carlos said. “In his library.”

“Books about that?”

“Oh, plenty. Journals and offprints too.”

The phone rang, startling both of us, and I rose and went to the wall beside the sink to answer it. Carlos was puffing at his cigar, reaching for the good brandy I’d brought to the table. It was Erica Plummer, her voice small and hysterical.

“I told him,” she said. “I had to tell him.”

“Easy,” I said. “What do you mean?”

“The cattails! It was his friend. He made me tell him.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she hissed. “He locked me in the closet, but I got out.”

“How long ago?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know!”

I looked down at my watch. “It’s seven-fifteen.”

“Then I guess an hour, maybe more.”

“Just stay where you are,” I said. “Right there. I’ll call you back.”

I hung up the phone, then turned back to the table and heard the pounding. It was coming down the hallway from the front door, and I thought of the Steyr in the desk in Sara’s sewing room, then heard glass shattering. Carlos was on his feet now, and I held my hand out to stop him.

“This will be difficult,” I said. “Why don’t you try for the basement?”

But he didn’t move, just lowered his snifter to the table and smiled faintly, and I heard his feet on the carpet behind me as I headed down the hall and into the living room, where I saw a foot on the floor, grinding in broken glass, a work boot and the leg half through the window, and felt Carlos brushing by me as he headed there. Then I heard wood splintering and turned and saw the axe head in the door.

Its blade dipped and withdrew, then it ripped in again near the middle hinge, and I saw the frame splitting and the door torquing and wobbling and twisting inward and saw thick fingers at the edge, a hand shaking the door, and turned quickly and headed for the hall closet and Sara’s old bow and quiver. I saw Carlos as I turned. He had hold of the man’s leg and was lifting it. The foot was above the floor now and the toe of the boot reached down like a dancer’s, searching again for purchase, and I saw a fist come through a central light, glass and broken mullions in the air before it. Then hands gripped the frame and the man’s body filled it as he came through, his face cut and bleeding, shirtsleeves in shreds at his bloody arms. He kicked out at Carlos, catching him on the hip. Then he was in the room and very large and Carlos disappeared under him as they fell down in the broken glass. I saw the man buck, his hips rise as before a sexual thrust. Then they were rolling and Carlos had his fists in his hair, and I saw his broad forehead bang against the man’s nose, and more blood, and the man rolling away from Carlos, his hands over his face, as I reached into the closet and through the winter coats and found the bow.

I had to string it and get an arrow in place, and once I’d done that and turned again the door was falling inward and the man with the axe was climbing it and coming through and another was behind him, and as I pulled the bow and the door banged on the carpet just inches from my feet, I saw Carlos under the window at the baseboard. He was sitting across the man’s legs at his knees, pounding him repeatedly in the stomach. The man’s hands reached down to guard himself, and Carlos reached over them and hit him in the face, and I saw his hands slip from his chest and fall down beside his body into shards of broken glass.

The man hesitated on the fallen door, the axe held at the ready at his shoulders, and stared at me in half vacant surprise before his eyes focused. His hair was carefully combed, a thinning black, grey-streaked and oiled, and his head seemed too small above his thick shoulders and neck, and I thought I saw remnants of plugs at the hairline. His features were delicate, a pointed nose and thin lips, and his blond feathery brows seemed feminine and recently plucked. He was large and barrel-chested, broad through the stomach and hips, and his hands gripping the axe were thick-fingered, and I could see them in Erica’s hair as he dragged her child’s body over furniture and hard tile toward the toilet.

The man entering behind hardly budged him when he bumped into him, and I saw his head over Plummer’s shoulder, the cattail man, younger, as he reached out for the other’s arm and touched it, and they both glanced over at Carlos, whose palms now rested on the chest of the still, prone figure, just long enough, and I sent the arrow through Plummer’s thigh.

He looked down at it, the quivering feather end. Then he looked up at me. There were tears in his small eyes, saliva on his lips, and I knew that though he’d had no plan to kill me, just to come here and beat me, he had one now.

He lifted the axe up and staggered forward, and as he came at me and the cattail man reached out to stop him, I saw Carlos moving low over the carpet, then saw the cattail man falling, his legs in the air. His head hit the floor with a thud and Carlos was on him, his hands in his hair, and Plummer turned at the sound, and I stepped forward and grabbed the axe handle near the blade and swung the bow and hit him, hard across the cheek. Then I kicked out at his healthy leg and heard the patella crack, and once he’d fallen to the floor beside the cattail man I stood over him, the bow in one hand, the axe in the other. He looked up at me in wonder, then down at the feather. Then he stared at the ceiling, his eyes watering in pain and disgust.

I got handcuffs and duct tape and we secured them. Then I went to the phone and called the station and told the duty man we’d need an ambulance too. Then I called Warren at home. Carlos had a few glass cuts on his arms, and he went to the bathroom to tend them while I waited, and when Warren and the others arrived and we heard the ambulance in the distance, I went to the kitchen phone and called Erica Plummer.

“Can you leave in a few hours?” I said.

“Is he all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll be okay. And the others will too. But they’ll be locked up for a while. Is there anyone else?”

“I can’t say,” she said. “I don’t know. He has more friends like those. He may have called someone.”

“Just a minute,” I said, and put down the phone and went to talk with Warren, then came back again.