Death Qualified (53 page)

    "Where do I stand?" she asked at the kitchen table, holding a coffee mug with both hands.

    "It could go several ways," Barbara said.

    "A new trial is as likely as anything else." She regarded Nell for several moments, then said, "If you want another attorney, we'll understand. I'd cooperate in any way possible."

    Nell shook her head vigorously.

    "No. But I'm worried about Travis. He's twelve, old enough to understand what's happening, as much as any of us can. We're going over to John and Amy's for Thanksgiving, but we'll be back Friday. They asked us to stay the weekend and I said no.

    Travis needs .. . something, I just don't know what. Talk maybe." She sipped the coffee, staring past Barbara.

    "He likes Clive, I think."

    Very carefully, Barbara said, "Travis probably needs to have you home with him for a time. It's been hectic for everyone."

    Nell nodded, still looking at something else.

    "I guess that's part of it." Abruptly she shook herself and looked at Barbara.

    "I don't believe any of us could stand another trial. Not John and Amy. Not my kids. Maybe not me."

    "You're tired. That's to be expected. I'm tired, too. We all are."

    "Clive would be willing to adopt both children. Did you know that? That's good of him, isn't it?"

    "Nell, listen to me. You've been through the wringer and you're feeling desperate, but the worst is behind you.

    Don't make any decisions too soon. Rest first. Relax. Tike walks, play with the children, do all the things you used to do with them, and don't try to see too far ahead. Not just yet. We don't know yet what the DA will decide, and we haven't given up, not by a long shot. There are some things we're still looking into."

    Nell smiled at her, a strangely gentle smile, the way she might smile at her daughter if she was being ridiculous.

    "If I say what happened, I won't be believed ever. I don't believe it myself. And if I can't believe that, maybe I re ally have amnesia for what happened. Maybe I actually did take the rifle up there. Maybe I was startled and scared when he appeared so suddenly, and before I could think, I fired. Then I forgot it and made up an incredible story.

    Not expecting to be believed, really wanting to be challenged, to be forced to remember." She nodded.

    "When the children are older, they could accept that. Travis could accept it now, I think. Accidents happen. No one has suggested I planned it. An accident."

    Barbara felt icy all over. She leaned forward. "For God's sake, Nell, is that what happened? What did you do? Climb up on a rock to shoot him?"

    "That's no more incredible than the story I've been telling Nell said softly.

    "I don't know the details, or why I cleaned the rifle afterward. But none of that matters.

    Can't you understand what I'm saying? None of that matters because no one will ever believe the actual truth.

    They'd believe a lie." She stood up.

    "Maybe truth is more relative than we ever suspected. Maybe it takes a believer to make something true. It can't exist independently of at least one believer. Maybe there's no way ever to know what's true. I don't know what I believe any longer. I used to think that if you told the truth everything would work out." She laughed without humor and left the table, left the kitchen.

    Walking away, she continued to talk.

    "I have to go now.

    I wanted to tell you this. That I don't think the kids could go through it again. Carol is so afraid she's having bad dreams and has gone back to thumb sucking. Travis.. ..

    He hardly even speaks' to anyone these days. He can't force himself to look straight at me! What do you suppose they're saying to him in school? On the bus? Kids can be so cruel.

    I was thinking that if they had a mother and a father, if we all lived as a family, and if I have to be.. .. If I'm gone for a time, there would be some kind of stability for them." She found her jacket in the foyer and pulled it on, took a wool cap from the pocket and put it on. Her short, curly hair stuck out all around it like a soft fringe.

    "Children need a father," she said vaguely.

    "They never knew theirs."

    Helplessly Barbara walked to the front door with her.

    "Please," she said, "just don't do anything too soon. Let it rest a few days. Give us a chance to follow up some of the lines we're looking into. Will you? Please, Nell, will you let me know the minute you decide anything? Any thing."

    Nell shrugged.

    "A few days. But I don't dare wait too long, you see. Everything takes time."

    Barbara watched her walk away until she was hidden by the big trees. Then she slammed the door. The telephone was ringing.

    She stood by the answering machine when she heard a deep voice ask first for Mike, and then for her, or her father. She started to lift the receiver, then drew back and listened.

    "This is Walter Schumaker. I should like to have a conference with Barbara Holloway, Frank Holloway, and Mike Dinesen. This afternoon, if that is convenient. I shall be at this number for the next several hours. Please let me know." He gave the number and hung up. She played it back again, frowning. Then she shrugged. That, at least, could wait until her father returned with Mike. Let them decide about Schumaker.

    The immediate problem, she admitted then, was that she didn't blame Nell. Not a bit. She could walk into a judge's chambers next week, Frank at her side, Tony there being professional and cool, and it could end, sentence passed, sentence begun almost instantly, the future settled.

    Nell's future, the children's future, dive's future. Indecision was more stressful than a bad decision; hadn't she read that somewhere? If not, she should have, she thought grimly. She couldn't even tell her she suspected Clive, not without some proof. But neither could she let Nell marry him, not if he actually had done it. No matter what, she promised herself silently, she would not allow that wed ding to take place.

    Her mood was deep and black when Frank and Mike arrived later in their separate cars. Frank came in first; she looked past him to Mike who was entering the foyer. "What the hell did you think you were doing? Where were you? What happened to you? How are you?"

    He looked at her as if his eyes were not focusing properly his expression was puzzled. He reached out, but stopped short of touching her, let his hand rest in midair momentarily, and then made a curious motion, as if tracing an outline.

    "Mike! What's wrong?"

    Abruptly he seemed to shift to wakefulness from a near dream state. He put his hand to his head.

    "I think I have a concussion or something. It's okay now." He drew her into his arms and held her.

    It was wrong, she thought almost wildly; this was not the reassuring embrace of someone trying to prove things were all right, but rather this was like the clinging embrace of a child coming out of a nightmare, pleading wordlessly to be held here, to be kept here, not to be allowed to slip back into the frightening dream.

    THIRTY-FOUR

    they sat in the living-room before a brisk fire. Mike was sprawled in one of the soft chairs, his legs stretched out before him, his eyes closed. Frank was in the matching chair, as stiff and tense as an expectant father; Barbara huddled on the couch.

    "Just tell us what happened," she said in a low voice.

    "Mike, please snap out of it and tell us what happened to you! Do you want to see a doctor?"

    He laughed but did not open his eyes.

    "No way. They'd stick me in the equivalent of Bellevue, whatever it is out here. As long as I don't move and don't open my eyes, I seem to be okay."

    "For God's sake, how did you mange to drive out?"

    He looked thoughtful, his forehead gathered in furrows;

    then he said, "I don't know. I seem to have a screwed-up time sense, among other things."

    Barbara looked at her father helplessly. Frank said, "He was in the kitchen when I got up. He seemed about as normal as he ever was, and he wanted to go home to see what they did to his computers, and to the airport to collect the disks he had stashed in one of the lock boxes, and to get his car. That seemed reasonable enough. He kept his eyes closed most of the way, said he had a headache."

    "He drove home with his eyes closed?" she cried.

    "This is crazy!"

    "Well, not closed, not like now. We started to drive, with him out front, and he was a bit erratic. Just a bit erratic. So I pulled around him and stopped and we had a little talk, and he said that if he kept his eyes on a fixed object, he was okay. He tailed me, I guess with his eyes.

    fixed on my license plate or something. That's what took so long. I never went more than thirty."

    She stared at him in disbelief.

    "You let him drive in that condition? Why? Why didn't you get a doctor? Or leave his damn car somewhere and keep him in yours?"

    Frank was watching Mike so intently that his eyes had started to tear. He wiped them with his handkerchief and then fished his glasses out of his pocket and wiped them carefully.

    "Bobby, I don't know why, and that's God's truth. I don't know."

    She was startled then by a deep sound from Mike; she realized he was chuckling softly, low in his throat. He did not open his eyes.

    "I got the disks," he said.

    "I took them home to copy them, and to see what they had. Sometime later, I knew what Frobisher had done, and I had to talk to Schumaker and Margolis, Brandywine, too, if she was around. I was in Denver, calling Schumaker. You see, my time sense is messed up. Sorry about that. I was doing one thing and thinking I should do something else, and there I was doing the something else." He was laughing under it all, she knew; it was like the subdued mirth of a child at Christmas.

    "Then what?" she asked. Her voice sounded unfamiliar, too shrill, trembling.

    "I think I got erratic in Schumaker's office, or somewhere.

    Erratic. Nice word. Off the straight and narrow, veering, unpredictable. He kept saying the work was over with, done, destroyed. He lied. I think they probably re 3 strained me, and then gave me something to calm me down. It worked just fine. Then we were home, my home, and they were looking for the disks, to see if I had loaded them into my computers, saved them under some other name, hidden them under the laundry. He brought Margolis because he's the computer genius. The disks can't hide from him." The laughter broke out this time. It vanished almost instantly.

    "Hey, Barbara, don't cry. It's all right."

    Tears were running down her cheeks. But he had not opened his eyes.

    "I'm going to get us some coffee," Frank said, hurrying from the room.

    "I'm sorry I scared him," Mike said softly.

    "And you.

    I can't seem to help it right now. Listen to me, Barbara.

    Listen. I have to go through the disks one more time. I can't stop where I am, you see. I can't keep my eyes closed forever, but if I open them, I'm not really sure what I'll see. That's how it is right now." He was laughing again, not openly, but under his words laughter seemed to ripple and bubble.

    "No! Where are they?"

    "Frank has them. But, Barbara, I need to go through them again. I really need to. I feel like a nickering light bulb, on and off, on and off. I can run the copies on Frank's computer."

    She shook her head.

    "Tell me what's on them. What they did to you. You act as if you've been brainwashed or something."

    "Brainwashed. In the washing machine, churning around and around. That's exactly right. In the Whirlpool.

    That's a brand name, you know. Apt. In a whirlpool you get spun around and around and finally thrown out. There are a lot of places where you can land, a lot of places where you can be thrown free, some of them places you don't want to hit, because you won't leave them again. In the whirlpool, spinning, spinning. That's where I am, Barbara, spinning around and around. You can't guide me out and neither can Frank. The disks can, I hope."

    "You're tripping," she whispered.

    "My God, they must have given you LSD or something like that. A hallucinogenic drug."

    He laughed.

    "I want the disks, Barbara. Come on in, Frank. And bring your briefcase. That's where you put them, isn't it?"

    Frank walked into the living room.

    "I think we should call Doc, or take him to the hospital if Doc's not home yet."

    Barbara nodded miserably.

    "And have another Lucas on your hands?" Mike murmured.

    "That's what they did to him, you know. He was caught in the whirlpool and they didn't know what to do, so they kept him on tranquilizers for years and years. No way, Frank. Not me." He drew his feet in and started to rise from his chair; when he opened his eyes he went dead white, swayed, and then clutched his ears with both hands, closed his eyes again.