I peeked into the next room before entering. It was an office with overstuffed bookcases and a shelf lined with the skulls of large mammals. At a glance, I identified a bear, a bobcat, a seal. A trestle table faced a half-open window with a view of the pond. During the day, the vista must have been magnificent. But with the lights on inside the room, the panes had become black mirrors that showed not just the room in reverse but me in reverse as well.
My reflected self wore a murderous mask.
Having cleared the office, I continued into the next chamber of the disjointed building. It was like moving through train carriages after a minor derailment. A narrow hall took me past a darkroom with a closed door and a red light to signal when it was in use. Strong chemical odors seeped through crumbling drywall and left a metallic taste on my tongue.
Beckwith could be waiting with a firearm inside that darkroom. He could shoot me dead through the plaster wall. I assumed the door had a lock to prevent some idiot from intruding while Markham or Speer was developing their grotesque images in alkaline baths.
I stood to one side of the threshold and with my free hand gripped the knob.
Just then, I heard a massive splash.
Son of a bitch.
Beckwith had dived into the quarry pond.
I barged through a kitchen toward a wide-open door leading to the dock overlooking the pond. I was on a high from the adrenaline in my bloodstream, but I wasn’t so mindless that I failed to notice something was amiss.
Three chairs surrounded the rectangular kitchen table. It looked … wrong.
Shouldn’t there be four?
The question wasn’t enough to stop me in my tracks. But the hesitation slowed my forward progress as I stepped onto the swaying dock.
Beckwith tried to grab my gun as I came through the door. Having thrown a kitchen chair into the water to fool me, he had been waiting outside with his back pressed to the wall. The microsecond I’d hesitated had saved me from losing my firearm.
He was so close I could smell the sweetness of the liquor and tobacco on his breath. I pulled my elbows back until the heels of my hands were against my sternum. The attitude was almost one of prayer. We fought for possession of the Beretta, and Beckwith was not a weak man.
My finger squeezed the trigger, and the recoil rammed the slide against my chest. Beckwith stumbled back, one hand clamped against his chipped collarbone. He lost his balance and fell into the quarry pond. He sank like a block of granite.
My younger self might have continued firing into the expanding rings where he’d disappeared. The law says a police officer must cease fire if he is no longer in danger. But when you’ve just been in a fight, it takes tremendous willpower to remember your training let alone the law.
Now I scanned the surface down the barrel of my handgun. I pulled out my Fenix and shined it on the water. The ripples subsided.
A full minute passed before I heard him resurface. He was farther out in the pond, beyond the reach of my flashlight. I heard him swimming. Injured shoulder and all, he dragged himself across the pond through sheer force of will.
“Shit!”
There was no way I was going to follow him into the water. My only option was to circle the flooded pit and catch him when he emerged. If only I had visited the quarry during the daytime and had even the roughest idea of its dimensions. I assumed there must be a path but couldn’t be certain.
Stacey was still performing chest compressions on Clay Markham. She had managed to get out her cell phone, dial it, and pin the device between her shoulder and her ear.
“If I stop CPR now, he’ll die,” she told someone on the other end. “I understand the situation, but I need to get him off the island to a hospital.”
She lifted her mouth away from the microphone to speak to me. “LifeFlight is responding to three other emergencies—fucking July—and can’t give me an ETA.”
“What should I do?”
“Did you get Beckwith?”
“I winged him in the shoulder before he went into the pond. Somehow he’s swimming across.”
“Then go after him, Mike. Don’t worry about me.”
“We need to arrange a boat to take Markham inshore.”
“I’ve got it covered,” she said. “Trust me.”
My gaze fell upon the heavy black stick Beckwith had hurled at me. It was Kendra Ballard’s missing shillelagh.
I stepped through the door I’d kicked in but halted immediately beside the ATV. It occurred to me that Beckwith might try to draw me away from the studio, then circle back to steal it. Stacey was preoccupied with saving Markham and would be vulnerable to an attack.
I had to focus. I had to trust my experience.
He’s going to run.
Where?
The sandbar.
The road we had followed to the studio had skirted the ocean because the terrain along Hatchet Island’s north side was relatively flat. Beckwith would choose a shorter, fast way to the other side.
Ahead of me, a narrow footpath zigzagged up the cliff face from which the granite had been excavated. My guess was that it climbed up and over the highest point of Hatchet Island. It either came out at the wire bales—we had encountered just such a path at the crossroads—or it joined another trail that led to the harbor.
The moon was finally up above the tallest trees and three-quarters full. I took it as a good omen.
As a rule, I distrust shortcuts, but it seemed a night for gambling.
I holstered my Beretta to make the ascent.
The path was steep and made of rock from which the rain had washed away the already thin soil. The granite was treacherous in its smoothness. The trees were slick and slug-ridden. I found myself grasping for branches. Beneath the evergreens, the entire forest floor was blanketed with pincushion and sphagnum moss. It looked soft and inviting, but moss can hide holes that will snap your ankle. I didn’t dare leave the path.
I thought of Stacey with Clay Markham’s life literally in her hands. He was responsible for the death of at least three people, probably more. One of them had been Stacey’s roommate and close friend. All she had to do was lift her hands from his chest—pause long enough for his stricken heart to cease pumping—and Kendra Ballard and the others would be avenged. Stacey could claim that she had done everything she could for the dying man, and who would be able to question her?
But she wasn’t going to do that. She had committed herself to saving the vile man’s life. I found that I trusted her absolutely. The love I felt for Stacey Stevens drove me in my pursuit of Beckwith. She was my teammate tonight. We were joined together in our shared tasks.
I found myself confronted with a ten-foot wall. The moonlight didn’t show a way around the cliff face. The granite was utterly flat except for vertical furrows like troughs dug by stone-eating worms. These had been the holes where miners had driven iron spikes and used wedges to pry the blocks loose.
With no way around the obstacle, I had no choice but to leap straight up and catch the top with my fingertips. I tried bringing a foot up to locate a toehold, but my kayaking shoe found no purchase. There was nothing to do but pull hard, using every muscle in my arms and upper back.
I had just thrown an elbow over the rim, with the rest of my body hanging down the cliff, when I heard a branch crack. I looked up in time to see Chris Beckwith lurching toward me with a granite block raised to smash my brains in.