• twenty-five •

“It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”

—Helen Burns to Jane, Jane Eyre

Emily stayed in the library, chewing over everything she and Luke had just discussed. What would make Jeremiah want to kill all three of the men who’d been interested in Katie? Katie’s curse theory looked more likely by the minute.

No. It wasn’t a curse that linked Jake’s murder, Roman’s fatal accident, and Jamie’s frightening near miss. It was one man’s intention.

Little facts and incidents to which she’d attached no importance at the time suddenly sprang vividly to her mind. Rachel Edwards’s resemblance to Katie in the photograph Mrs. Elliot showed her. The fact that Jeremiah had very likely overheard Katie talking to Emily about Jake’s rape of her. His ferocity, as reported by Katie, in dismissing Roman after he accosted her. Jeremiah could also have overheard, and misinterpreted, the conversation in which Katie asked Jamie to stay away for his own good.

What if Jeremiah had somehow transmogrified his rage and grief over the death of his own daughter into an obsessive desire to protect Katie from sexual harm? What if he’d taken his extreme judgmental attitude toward lustful indulgence a step further and appointed himself a vigilante to make sure all such offenders were punished?

The contraction in her gut told Emily she’d hit on something very near the truth. But that still left the practical problem: How could Jeremiah have escaped the stairway after Jake’s murder without being seen?

More jagged shards of memory clicked together like the tumblers of a lock. Jeremiah’s unreasonable reluctance to take down that paneled wall. The odd feeling it gave her. And the Clean Scene man, Fred Senior, had said something about Windy Corner being full of secret passages. She’d only shown him the one. Had he found another?

As if drawn by a magnet, she rose and approached the curved shelf that led to the stairway. She hadn’t opened it since the day after the murder, hadn’t planned to open it ever again; in fact, she’d nearly decided on putting in that elevator, as the stairs were forever poisoned for her by Jake’s death. But now she reached for the fake volume of Arabian Nights and gave it a pull.

The curved wall creaked open. Emily took the flashlight that nestled in a little hollow in the side of the shelf and lit her way up the stairs. Clean Scene had done their job well; she couldn’t see the bloodstains left by Jake’s falling body. But she could still feel them.

At the top she paused and shined the flashlight in a circle. She saw no crack in the paneling, no possible place for a release lever to be concealed. If there was a passage here, it had been constructed very cleverly. Emily wondered whether Beatrice had even known of it.

Logically, if the passage came out in the third-floor sitting room, the opening should be on the wall nearest the hall. Probably right there, on the curve that fronted the corner where the side wall of Beatrice’s bedroom met the wall of the hall. Emily held the flashlight under her left arm so she could feel around the wall with both hands, applying gentle pressure in various spots.

At last she heard a soft click, and the panel swung outward under her hand. She set the opening wide and trained her flashlight into the tiny space—no more than a corner with one concave side. A rude ladder consisting of blocks nailed to the wall ascended to her right. Several spiders skittered away from the light.

Emily did not do ladders. Not even clean ones in well-lit, spider-free rooms. And she certainly didn’t do spiders. She could just leave this for Luke to investigate later.

But some instinct told her later would be too late. And perhaps if she could provide Luke with the last piece of the puzzle about Jeremiah’s opportunity for killing Jake, he would forgive her for lying to him.

She stretched up and laid the flashlight on the highest rung she could reach. Taking her courage in both hands, and heartily wishing those hands were at least gloved, she began her ascent.

The first rung wasn’t so bad. The floor was still comfortingly close below her. The second rung required her to make a withdrawal from her courage account. At the third rung, she felt something brush across her fingers. Instinctively she snatched her hand away and shook it, shifting her balance so that for a moment she hung precariously in space. A chasm yawned below her, and her stomach rose into her throat. Her heart beating like a tom-tom at a primitive dance, she swung her body back toward the wall and clung tight with both hands, breathing hard and uttering a frantic “Lord have mercy” on every breath.

When her heart had calmed to a mere polka, she screwed her last remaining bit of courage to the sticking point. You can do this, she told herself. Make Luke proud. She wiped one sweaty palm on her skirt, then the other, took a deep breath, and climbed another rung. Now her hands met the flashlight. One more rung. She picked up the flashlight and trained it above her head. The ladder ended two rungs beyond her eye level, and a dim opening stretched out above.

She used the flashlight to scan the remaining rungs for spiders and squash the one she found, then laid the light at the top of the stairs. In one deep breath she raced up the few remaining rungs, gained the upper floor, and stepped onto it with the gratefulness of a mountain climber reaching a towering peak. Voices reached her from the other side of the wall—Luke’s raised in accusation, Jeremiah’s muttering in self-justification.

Now to find the way out.

*   *   *

Luke found Edwards working in the soon-to-be bathroom. “Need to talk to you a minute, Edwards. Come in here.” He led him into the sitting room, where as yet there was no place to sit.

“I understand you’ve been using Howard Jenkins’s car while he’s out of town.”

Edwards’s eyes immediately went wary, so Luke knew he was on the right track. Violent he might recently have become, but the man was not an accomplished liar. This might not be too hard.

“Who told you that?”

“Your neighbor. Mrs. Elliott. Seems like not much gets by her, sitting on her porch all day.”

Edwards cleared his throat, probably weighing how much he’d have to admit to be plausible. “Drove Jenkins and his wife to the airport week ago Sunday in their car. Took it out for a spin yesterday to keep the battery going.”

“Go to Tillamook, did you?”

“No, just around town.” His eyes were all around the room as he said that. That much was a lie.

Luke would leave that for the time being. “I also have reason to believe you helped Roman Martinez off of this roof.”

Edwards froze, his eyes narrowed on Luke’s face. “What reason?”

“There’s a nasty bruise on his ankle. And according to what you yourself told me, you’re the only one who could’ve put it there.”

“I—I reached out to him when I saw him fall. Trying to save him. May have caught at his ankle, don’t remember. Anyway, he was too heavy. Slid out of my grasp.”

“Now I wonder why you didn’t tell me that in the first place?”

“It—simply slipped my mind.”

“Slipped your mind. Just like his ankle slipped out of your grasp. Your very firm grasp, judging from the severity of that bruise.”

“Go ahead, twist my words. You can’t prove it didn’t happen like I said. Besides, why would I want to hurt Martinez? Already fired him. That was enough.”

“I’m still working on the why, to tell you the absolute truth. I only have the how. But I think I know what reason you had to kill Jake Newhouse.”

“Newhouse! What makes you think I had anything to do with that?”

“He’s the fellow that raped and impregnated your daughter. Or at least you believed him to be.”

Edwards’s face went an ugly red. “I never went into that bedroom. If anyone says he saw me there, he’s a liar. The Lord hates a liar.”

Out of nowhere Luke heard a familiar, if muffled, voice, pitched an octave lower than usual: “But He also hates hands that shed innocent blood. Don’t forget that, Jeremiah.”

Edwards’s eyes looked as if they would fly out of his head as he whipped around, searching floor, ceiling, everywhere for that disembodied voice. “Innocent! How can you call him innocent? He was a viper, a snake in the grass, the lowest vermin that ever disturbed the peace of Eden. He seduced my girl, I tell you! He stole the most precious treasure she had. And then he stole her from me. She killed herself to destroy the evil seed that was in her. And he had the gall to come back here and stand in that stairwell—whistling!”

“What about Roman?” came the spectral voice. “And Jamie, for pity’s sake? Jamie is innocent if any man is.”

“They were bothering Miss Parker. I had to defend her. She’s so much like my Rachel.…”

At this inopportune moment, Katie’s head appeared around the corner from the hall. “Lieutenant, have you seen Mrs. C?”

Luke waved her back out of the room, but it was too late. Edwards had seen her, and he was closer. In two strides he’d reached Katie and caught her in his arms. “Rachel!” he cried. “You’ve come back to me! The Lord has rewarded His faithful servant.”

His sunken eyes lit with a triumphant, maniacal fire. “I had to rid the world of all that evil. It was my Christian duty. The scripture says the penalty for rape is death.” He held Katie’s arm in a viselike grip as he stared around the room, his voice rising. “God appointed me as His minister to purge the Earth of bloodthirsty and deceitful men who would prey upon a young girl. I am not to blame.” He raised his free hand to heaven and cried out, “I am not to blame!”

Katie hung limp in Edwards’s arms. Her terrified eyes fastened on Luke’s, mutely begging him to deliver her—which he must do, at any cost. He fought down panic as his mind filled with calculations—his own weight versus Edwards’s greater height; the time it would take him to cross the room and tackle Edwards versus the time it would take Edwards to lock Katie’s throat in a stranglehold. Luke had brought his pistol from the car, anticipating trouble; but he couldn’t use it without endangering Katie. He didn’t delude himself the girl was safe because Edwards had mistaken her for his daughter. The man had flipped, gone clean over the edge. No one within his reach was safe.

But Edwards still answered to one authority—the voice of God. And it came in right on cue. “If you do not forgive others, you will not be forgiven. You may have memorized the whole Old Testament, Jeremiah Edwards, but you’ve ignored the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your actions are not pleasing in His sight.” The unseen voice escalated in volume and authority as it lowered in pitch. “The bloodthirsty and deceitful man is you!”

A look of horror crossed Edwards’s wasted features. He pulled Katie in front of him, one wiry arm across her throat while the other hand still gripped her arm, and edged toward the window. “This world is not our home, Rachel. We must go to our Maker. He will receive us into His everlasting mansions!”

It was now or never. Luke shot a look at Bobby and Bertie Fillmore, who’d been watching in fascinated horror from the bathroom. They were big, muscled young guys; he prayed they’d have the wits to cooperate. He launched himself toward Edwards, aiming to land between the maniac and the window. Bobby and Bertie rushed Edwards from the other side, one wrenching his arm away from Katie’s neck while the other slammed his wrist to loosen his grip on her arm.

Seeing himself overpowered, Edwards suddenly wilted. His arms fell limp at his sides and he hung his head, his breath coming in giant gasps. Bertie pulled Katie out of reach as Bobby yanked both of Edwards’s hands behind his back.

Luke pulled out his handcuffs and began: “Jeremiah Edwards, I’m arresting you for the murders of Jake Newhouse and Roman Martinez, and the attempted murder of Jamie MacDougal. You have the right to remain silent…”

The back wall opened and Emily stepped out into the room. “I think it’s a little late for that.”