SURPRISINGLY, THERE WAS ALMOST no blood.
She’d lost her urine, and the room reeked of feces. But there was almost no blood. There was only enough blood to turn her mass of tawny hair a thick, congealing crimson.
Her wide-open eyes were as inanimate as two stones. Lying on her back beside the limestone slab of the coffee table, her body had already begun to flatten on the bottom. No longer circulating through her body, her blood was settling. Ultimately, someone had said, gravity claims us all.
Two hours ago, locked together, inciting each other, guiding each other—reveling in each other—they’d made love.
Now, incredibly, she was dead.
He’d drawn the drapes and turned off all the lights, leaving only a single table lamp lit. He was sitting in a chair that faced the ocean. He could hear the sound of surf, that timeless, endless sound. He looked at his watch, but somehow the time didn’t relate to reality. It was as if the surface of his consciousness was too fragmented to retain even the most elemental information. His data base was closing down. His—
From a nearby speaker the sound of the telephone suddenly warbled, shattering the silence. A cordless phone, that constant extension of himself, lay on the lamp table beside him. He’d already touched the phone, an automatic response, before he remembered: Carolyn, lying motionless less than ten feet from him. Carolyn, dead.
But why shouldn’t he answer the phone? What was the connection?
His recorded message was short, followed by Kane’s voice:
“Yeah, this is Bruce. I wanted to check whether you’d left for the airport yet. We shouldn’t wait too much longer.”
Listening to his pilot’s voice, Daniels realized that he was frowning. Always, there was a hint of arrogance in Kane’s manner, especially if he was exercising his pilot’s safety-related prerogatives. If Kane refused to fly, plans were changed. There was no appeal. Accounting, Daniels knew, for Kane’s habitual insolence. A pilot made life-or-death decisions. His life. His death.
Daniels realized that he’d risen to his feet and was moving to his study, to the telephone control panel. It was impossible to talk in the same room with the body.
The simple act of walking helped. He could feel himself surfacing, willing himself to take charge. From this moment on, time would begin to work for him, not against him. The jangle of the telephone had jolted him back to self-command, self-salvation.
He switched on the antique green-shaded brass study lamp, lifted the master phone, touched the button opposite N-50SR, the Beechcraft’s identification. Moments later, Kane answered.
Without preamble, Daniels said, “Listen, Bruce, there’s been a change of plans.”
“Ah—” It was a noncommittal response. “So?”
“So Miss Estes isn’t going to go with you tonight.”
Silence.
“And—ah—I’m not going, either. I’ve got to stay here, at least until—until tomorrow.” His voice, he knew, was ragged, his delivery uneven. Would Kane notice? Would Kane remember?
“It’s just as well. I just talked to Flight Service, and they—”
“But I want you to go anyhow.”
“What?” It was a single, flat-sounding monosyllable, Kane’s specialty.
“I want you to go to Westboro. I want you to leave an envelope for Jackie, at the registration desk. Then—” Quickly, he calculated: it was a little more than an hour to Westboro, if everything went right. Three hours, probably, round trip. Once more, he looked at his watch. Time: ten-twenty P.M. Plus three hours—he ticked off his fingers. One-thirty, at least. Two o’clock, if Kane had to wait for takeoff clearance.
“Then I want you to come back here. To Barnstable.”
“What?”
“That’s what I want you to do.”
“But, Christ, that could be four hours.”
“It can’t be helped.”
A long, angry silence followed. Then: “That’s assuming I can land here. Visibility’s down to minimums.”
“Do your best.” He hesitated. Then, reluctantly: “There’s a bonus if you get back tonight. Five hundred.”
Another silence, this one for calculation. Finally: “Have you got the envelope for Jackie ready?”
“It will be, by the time you—” Momentarily surrendering to a knife-flick of panic, he broke off. By the time you get here, he’d almost said. “By the time you’re ready, the envelope’ll be there. I’ll bring it to the plane. Now. Right now.”
“You will?” It was a curious, speculative question. Even though the airport was close by, a precedent was in question. Servants carried envelopes, not the master.
“I want to get out of the house, get some fresh air. I’ll be at the airport in a few minutes. If I miss you, I’ll leave the envelope at the desk. When you get back, call. Tell the answering machine what time you got in. Then go to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
On the other end of the line, Kane was chuckling: an insolent chuckle, Kane’s little joke. A five-hundred-dollar joke.
Daniels replaced the phone in its cradle, took an envelope and five sheets of blank paper from the desk drawer. Folding the paper, his fingers shook. He sealed the envelope, found a pen, began addressing the envelope. The pen magnified the trembling of his hand. Slowly, as awkwardly as he must have written when he was a child, he began forming the two words: Jacquelaine Miller. As he wrote, it seemed that he could hear a prosecutor addressing the jury. The prosecutor would hold up the envelope, for the jury’s inspection.
“You’ll notice, ladies and gentlemen, how utterly different this childish scrawl is from the defendant’s normal handwriting. The cause of this difference, we will show, is acute anxiety resulting from extreme guilt.”