Chapter 36
“Why were you trying to frame Elise Harkens?” I asked him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said wryly, as if he was actually beginning to enjoy the dialogue. Venting, even bragging about the secret he’d kept for so long. “I needed to direct the investigation away from me. Wives and husbands have been killing each other since the dawn of time. If you dig deep enough into any long-term relationship, you can probably find a motive for murder. I chose Elise when I bumped into her and Jim at the shooting range. They actually had the kind of gun I wanted to use. It was like I had Fate’s blessing.”
Without thinking, Tilly clucked her tongue in disapproval. I held my breath, afraid Westfield would cut his narrative short to make her his first victim. But he ignored her. “Turns out, you can talk yourself into believing pretty much anything.”
Caught up in the story, Tilly wouldn’t let it go. “How did you get into their house to steal the gun?”
“Fate to the rescue once again. My cleaning lady is their cleaning lady. She had their house key.”
I tried to shush my aunt before she said anything else, but she was a runaway train on the downhill. “The cleaning lady gave you the key, just like that?”
The ME gave a grim chuckle. “You don’t go through what I have, without learning that everyone has their price, be it money or the life of someone they love.”
The casual tone of his words made my skin crawl. Whatever empathy I’d felt for him turned to ice and shattered. The man he’d been the night that corpse arrived was not the man who was holding the gun on us today. Reasoning with him was not going to save us.
I don’t know if Sashkatu was reading my mind or the mood of the room, but he chose that moment to make a run at the ME. Before any of us realized what he was about to do, he launched himself at the ME’s gun hand. The weapon flew out of his grip, clattering to the floor. But he recovered too swiftly and with one swipe of his arm, caught Sashki in midair and knocked him halfway across the room. I winced as I watched his arthritic legs absorb the shock of his landing. Tilly shrieked in horror. I ran to help him, but he shook off the pain with an angry yowl, a small but stoic hero. Unfortunately his efforts were in vain. The gun had landed less than a foot away from Westfield. He had it in his hand in seconds and ordered me to get back to the others.
“The cat tries that again,” he said, “and he won’t have enough lives left to—hey,” he interrupted himself, “what’s going on with the old man?”
I looked over at Merlin, who was standing on the other side of Tilly. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling words I couldn’t distinguish. But I knew he was casting a spell. “He’s praying,” I said. “Just an old man praying for his life.”
“Well it’s creepy. Tell him to cut it out.”
“Merlin,” I yelled to get his attention, “Merlin, stop it. Stop it this second.”
“Tell him to cut it out or he gets the first bullet.” Westfield cocked the gun to prove his point.
“Merlin, stop!” I pleaded. “Stop!” He was so completely focused on the spell that he was beyond hearing me. I turned to the ME. “You can see that he suffers from dementia. He’s a harmless old man.”
Westfield wasn’t buying it. “He either stops the mumbo jumbo right now or he’s dead.”
Tilly’s eyes bulged with panic. Without a word, she reached over and grabbed the skin on the wizard’s forearm, pinching and twisting it with every bit of her strength. Merlin’s eyes flew open. He screeched as if a hawk had ripped a chunk out of him. “What possessed you to do such a thing?” he demanded of her, rubbing the bruised arm.
I did it to save your life, you old fool,” she said.
“I have never suffered anyone calling me a fool,” he responded indignantly, “and I do not intend to start now.”
“Shut up, both of you!” The ME growled at them. The gun was still cocked. It wouldn’t take much for the first bullet to fly. We were down to last resorts. I tried to quiet my mind, which, under the circumstances, was harder than anything I’d ever done. I focused my energies on the gun. I tugged at it and tugged at it until I felt as if I were twisting myself inside out with the effort. But the gun didn’t budge. If I could move a chair, moving the gun should have been easy. The problem had to be my state of mind.
Westfield was talking, but I blocked out his voice. I couldn’t allow him to distract me. I grabbed Tilly’s hand, hoping somehow she would strengthen me. She immediately understood what I was trying to do. She still had the plate of strudel in her other hand. After a second’s hesitation, she let it drop to the floor. Merlin yelped and was bending to retrieve it, when Tilly seized his hand. With the three of us linked, the boost from their energy nearly rocked me off my feet. If this had any chance of working, it had to be now! I locked my eyes on the gun in the ME’s hand and tugged at it with every ounce of my being. But instead of drawing the gun to me, I somehow drew myself to it. I was standing inches from the ME. Before he could process what was happening, I yanked the gun out of his hand. He was a quick study, though. Ignoring the whys and hows of what I’d done, he was determined to retake the weapon. As we struggled over the gun, it fired. All of us jumped. Tilly shrieked. I looked up, afraid she’d been hit. “I’m okay,” she sang out. “It hit the wall.” But in that moment of distraction, Westfield got a better grip on the gun. I was seconds away from losing it. In desperation I stomped on his foot, grinding my stiletto heel into it. He howled, the pain causing him to loosen his grip on the gun. I opened my hand too, letting the gun fall to the floor. Then I kicked it across the room to Merlin and Tilly, before sprinting back to them. Tilly grabbed the gun off the floor and was pointing it at the ME with shaking hands. She passed it over to me as soon as I reached her, apparently forgetting that I’d never learned how to shoot either. But one of us had to convince Westfield we knew what we were doing or he’d be on us in no time.
From across the room, he glared at us with feral anger, cornered yet again. One thing was clear. If he took a single step toward us, I would have to shoot him, pull the trigger without hesitation, without thought. All of our lives depended on it.
“No one move.” The order came from the rear door, which the ME had left unlocked for his escape. The voice was deep and commanding—detective Phillip Duggan. I wanted to turn and look, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Westfield, until I knew for sure we were safe.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” Westfield said. “Wilde is the one you’re after. She killed Harkens and in another second she would have killed me too.”
“He’s lying,” Tilly cried out before I could. “He’s the one who killed Jim. He confessed. We all heard him.” Merlin lent his voice to the fray and soon they were all shouting over each other.
“Quiet, all of you,” Duggan snapped. “Put down the gun, Ms. Wilde.”
“Not until you’ve got him in handcuffs,” I said, although my arms were aching and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold the gun extended in front of me the way they did on TV. Duggan must have given Curtis the nod, because the younger cop walked past me, holding a pair of plastic cuffs. He crossed the room to Westfield and in less than a minute, the killer’s hands were cuffed behind him. I lowered the gun.
Duggan was holstering his weapon as he came from behind me. He held out his hand. “I’ll take that now.”
My fingers were locked so tightly around the gun that for a moment I had trouble releasing it. Once it was in Duggan’s hand, relief surged through me, making my limbs go weak. In the next instant, Tilly threw her arms around me with such enthusiasm that she nearly sent both of us crashing to the floor. Somehow we managed to stay upright, swaying together like a couple trying to dance on a ship in heavy seas. Merlin joined us and had to make do with patting the part of my back that was free of Tilly’s embrace. “I commend you,” he said, solemnly. “You were as courageous as any knight of the realm.” I thanked him. “Although,” he went on, “had I been allowed to continue with my spell, things would have come to a more satisfying and entertaining conclusion.”
Tilly released me and turned her twinkling eyes to the sorcerer. “You were going to turn him into something, weren’t you?”
“I had not as yet decided between a rat and a beetle, when you stopped me by nearly tearing the skin from my body.” He was clearly not over his pique.
I left them and went hunting for Sashkatu. He wasn’t between the rows of metal shelving. I finally found him in the closet with the broom and cleaning supplies. I knelt down and held my arms out to him. Had it been an ordinary day, he would have ignored me. But there was nothing ordinary about this day, and he knew it as well as any of us. He struggled to his feet and came to me, favoring his left rear leg. He didn’t put up a fuss when I scooped him up and cradled him in my arms. I promised him his own salmon fillet for dinner and carried him over to Merlin and Tilly, who welcomed him like a conquering hero. Curtis was reading the ME his rights as he escorted him out of the storeroom.
“I’m going to need statements from all of you,” Duggan said. “Take some time to compose yourselves, then come down to the station, the one right here in New Camel.”
“Detective,” I said as he turned to leave. “A huge thank you, from all of us.”
“You’re welcome, Ms Wilde, but you seemed to have things under control before we arrived.”
“How did you know what was happening here?”
“I didn’t actually. You should thank your boyfriend. He’s very persistent. When he couldn’t reach you on your business phone or your cell, he called me. I told him the police were not in the habit of tracking down people who didn’t answer their phones for a few hours. He explained what he’d found out about Westfield and why he was worried about your safety. He wouldn’t let up on me. By the way,” Duggan added dryly, “you might want to impress on him that threatening to throw a police officer under the bus, even figuratively, is a good way to wind up in jail.”