Catherine Coulter - The Cove

"Then you ran, didn't you, Sally? You ran and you threw my prized pistol in the bushes. I couldn't get you then and I'll tell you the truth, I was scared. 1 had to get my gun first, though, and I did. But I'll tell you, I was worried, and I stayed worried for a long time. So what if you told the world you'd seen me, your father? If you did, even though you were certifiably crazy, they might have insisted that an autopsy be done, that dental records be compared, but you were so afraid, you just ran. You ran here, to The Cove, to Amabel.

"I didn't find out for a good four days that you'd blocked it all out. That you ran because you believed that either you'd killed me or dear Noelle had."

She was trying to take it all in, to realize that she'd never been wrong, to at last understand what this man was. She said slowly, “Quinlan made me remember. That and re-creating the scene, I guess you'd say. I saw everything then, everything."

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“I bet you want to know who the man was who looked like me. He was just a guy I discovered in Baltimore one day when I was meeting one of the Iraqi agents. He was broke, looked remarkably like me-same height, nearly the same weight-and then I knew when I saw him, just knew that he'd be the one to save me."

Why, she wondered, was he talking so much? Why was he just standing there pouring all this out to her?

And she realized then that it pleased him to brag about his brilliance to her. To make her realize how truly great he was. After all, she'd been in the dark about everything. Oh, yes, he was enjoying himself. "Jackie who?"

"You know, I really don't remember his last name. Who cares? He played his role and played it perfectly." Amory St. John laughed. “I promised him a truckload of money if he could impersonate me. I wish you could have heard him practicing my voice tones, my accent. It was pathetic, but both Doctor Beadermeyer and I told him he had a great ear, that he had all my mannerisms, that he could play me to perfection. That's what he believed would happen. He believed he was going to take my place at a big conference. It was his chance to do something, his chance to make a big score. He was a credulous fool."

"Now he's a dead fool."

"Yes."

She began to pull on the ropes ever so slightly as she said, "Doctor Beadermeyer is down, but you already know all that. He'll spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. Holland told the FBI everything.

All those people-people like me-will be let out of that prison that you call a sanitarium, like it's a resort where people go to recuperate and rest."

“Yes, but who cares about all those other people? They weren't my problem, just you. I only regret that the sanitarium will be closed down. It was such a perfect place for you. Out of the way for good. It all fell into place once I met Jackie. I already knew Doctor Beadermeyer and all about that little racket of his.

Nearly seven months ago, it all came together.

"I got you out of the way-with Scott's help, of course. He was such a miserable little fool, afraid he'd get caught, but I'll tell you, he sure liked the money he got from helping me. And, you see, I knew all about his lover. At least I made sure you didn't get AIDS. I threatened Scott that if he made love to you-if he could force himself to do the deed-then he had to use a condom. Doctor Beadermeyer checked your blood. Thanks to me, you're well. But Scott did play his part. Once he was free of you, he spent his money and dallied openly with his lover. He was a good pawn. Where was I? Oh, yes, then Jackie went under the knife, and I finalized my plans. But you had to butt in, didn't you, Sally? I had you all locked away and still you got out. Still you had to try to ruin my plans. Well, no more."

"Do you hate me so much just because I tried to protect my mother from your fists?"

"Actually not. It was natural that I wouldn't like you very much."

"It's because you believed that I'd learned about your illegal arms sales?"

"Did you?"

"No."

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"My dealings with other governments had nothing to do with it. Scott was afraid you'd seen something, but I knew you would have acted in a flash if you had. No, that didn't concern me. Fact of the matter is, you're not my daughter. You're a fucking little bastard. And that, my dear Sally, is why Noelle never left me. She tried once, when you were just a baby. She didn't believe me when I told her she was in this for life. Perhaps she thought she'd test me. She ran back to her rich, snotty parents in Philadelphia, and they acted true to form just as I knew they would. They told her to get back to her husband and stop making up lies about me. After all, I'd saved her bacon. How could she say such things about me, a wonderful man who'd married her when she was pregnant with another man's child?"

He laughed, a long, deep laugh that made her skin crawl. She kept lightly tugging on the ropes. Surely they were a little bit looser now, but she wasn't really thinking about those ropes. She was trying to understand him, to really take in what he was saying. But it was so hard.

He continued, his voice meditative, "When I think about it now, I realize that Noelle really hadn't believed me. She hadn't believed that my price to marry her, other than the five hundred thousand dollars I got from her parents, was that she stay with me forever, or until I didn't want her anymore. When she came dragging back with you-a screaming little brat-I took you away from her and held you over a big fire in the fireplace. The fire was blowing really good. It singed off the little hair you had and your eyebrows.

Oh, how she screamed. I told her if she ever tried anything like that again, I'd kill you.

"I meant it, you know. I bet you wonder who your father was."

She felt as though she'd had a ton of drugs pumped into her body. She couldn't grasp what he was saying. She understood his words-he wasn't her father-but she couldn't seem to get it to the core of herself.

"You're not my father," she repeated, staring beyond his left shoulder toward the open door. She wanted to cheer. She didn't have any of this monster's blood. "You kept Noelle with you by threatening to kill me, her only child."

"Yes. My dear wife finally believed me. I can't tell you the pleasure it gave me to beat that rich little bitch.

And she had to take it. She had no choice.

"Then you were sixteen and you saw me hit her. Too bad. It changed everything, but then I had good reason to get rid of you. Remember that last time? You came back into the house and I was kicking her and you got or. the phone to call for help and she crawled-actually crawled-over to you and begged you not to call? I enjoyed that. I enjoyed watching you simply disconnect from her.

"I kicked her a couple more times after you left. She really moaned delightfully. Then I had sex with her and she cried the whole time.

"After that I was free of you for a long while. Life was really quite good those four years you were out of my house, out of your mother's life. But I wanted to pay you back. I got Scott to marry you. That got you away for a little while, but you didn't want him, did you? You realized he was a phony almost immediately. Well, it didn't matter.

"I just had to bide my time. When I saw Jackie I knew what to do. You see, the Feds were closing in.

I'm not stupid. I knew it was only a matter of time. I'd gotten very rich, but arms sales to places like Iraq are always risky. Yes, it was just a matter of time. I wanted to pay you back for all the trouble you caused me. Those six months you were in Doctor Beadermeyer's sanitarium were wonderful for me. I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html