Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro 3)

“And you killed her because of that?”

“I didn’t kill her,” she hissed.

“No?”

“Her car broke down, you fuck! Get it? That wasn’t part of the plan. She wasn’t supposed to be with Trevor. She wasn’t supposed to die.”

She coughed loudly into her fist, sucked a harsh, liquid breath back into her body.

“It was a mistake,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You loved her.”

“Yes.”

“So her death hurt you,” I said.

“More than you could possibly imagine.”

“Good,” I said.

“Good that she died, or good that her dying hurt me?”

“Both,” I said.

The great cast-iron gates parted before us as we turned into Trevor Stone’s driveway. I drove through the opening, and the gates closed behind me and my lights arced up ahead of us through the carefully manicured bushes and shrubs, curled left as the white gravel driveway snaked around an oval lawn with an enormous birdbath in its center, then broke gracefully to the right onto the main drive. The house lay a hundred yards up, and we passed through a row of white oak on either side, the towering trees standing proud and unyielding like sentries spaced at five-yard intervals.

When we reached the cul-de-sac at the end of the road, Desiree said, “Keep going. There,” and pointed. I drove around the fountain and it lit up at the same time, yellow streams of light coursing through sudden eruptions of frothy water. A bronze nymph floated above it all, twisting in slow revolutions, dead eyes on a cherub’s face watching me as I passed.

The road doglegged at the corner of the house and I followed it back through a stretch of pine to a converted barn.

“Park it there,” Desiree said, and pointed at a clearing to the left of the barn.

I pulled over and shut off the engine.

She took the keys and got out of the car, pointing the gun at me through the windshield as I opened my door and stepped out into the night, the air twice as frigid as it had been in the city due to the wind screaming off the ocean.

I heard the unmistakable sound of a round ratcheting into a shotgun chamber, and turned my head, looked down the black barrel at Julian Archerson standing at the other end.

“Evening, Mr. Kenzie.”

“Lurch,” I said. “A pleasure as always.”

In the dim light I could see a chrome cylinder sticking out of the left pocket of his topcoat. I got a closer look as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and realized it was an oxygen tank of some kind.

Desiree came around beside Julian and lifted a tube that hung off the tank, straightened the kinks in the tube until she extended a translucent yellow mask through the darkness.

She handed the mask to me and twisted the knob on the tank, and it hissed.

“Suck on this,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Julian dug the shotgun muzzle into my jaw. “You don’t have a choice, Mr. Kenzie.”

“For Miss Gennaro,” Desiree said in a sweet voice. “The love of your life.”

“Slowly,” I said as I took the mask.

“What’s that?” Desiree said.

“That’s how you’re going to die, Desiree. Slowly.”

I put the mask to my face and took a breath, immediately felt numbness tingle through my cheeks and fingertips. I took another one, felt a cloudiness invade my chest. I took a third, and everything went green, then black.

39

My first thought, as I swam back to consciousness, was that I was paralyzed.

My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move. And not just the limbs themselves, but the muscles.

I opened my eyes, blinked several times at a dry crust that seemed to have formed over the corneas. Desiree’s face floated past, smiling. Then Julian’s chest. Then a lamp. Then Julian’s chest again. Then Desiree’s face, still smiling.

“Hi,” she said.

The room behind them began to take on shapes, as if everything suddenly flew out of the darkness toward me and stopped abruptly at their backs.

I was in Trevor’s study, in a chair by the front left corner of the desk. I could hear the roar of the sea behind me. And as the effects of my sleep wore off, I could hear a clock ticking on my right. I turned my head and looked at it. Nine o’clock. I’d been out for two hours.

I looked down at my chest and saw nothing but white. My arms were pinned against the side of the chair, my legs against the inside of the chair legs. I’d been bound with an entire sheet strapped over my chest and thighs and another over my lower legs. I couldn’t feel any knots, and I realized both sheets were probably knotted at the back of the chair. And they were knotted tight. I was mummified, essentially, from the neck down, and no ligature marks or rope burns or handcuff abrasions would show on my body when it came time for the autopsy I was sure Desiree intended.

“No marks,” I said. “Very good.”

Julian tipped an imaginary hat to me. “Something I learned in Algeria,” he said. “A long time ago.”

“Well traveled,” I said. “I like that in a Lurch.”

Desiree came over and sat up on the desk, her hands under her thighs, legs swaying forward like a schoolgirl’s.

“Hi,” she said again, all sweetness and light.

“Hi.”

“We’re just waiting for my dad.”

“Ah.” I looked at Julian. “With Lurch here and the Weeble dead, who’s your father’s servant while he’s out on the town?”

“Poor Julian,” she said, “came down with the flu today.”

“Sorry to hear that, Lurch.”

Julian’s lips twitched.

“So, Daddy had to call a private limousine service to take him into the city.”

“Perish the thought,” I said. “What will the neighbors say? My gosh.”

She removed her hands from under her legs, pulled the pack of Dunhills from her pocket and lit one. “You figured it out yet, Patrick?”

I tilted my head and looked up at her. “You shoot Trevor, shoot me, make it look like we shot each other.”

“Something like that.” She brought her left foot up onto the desk, tucked the right under her, watched me through the smoke rings she blew in my direction.

“The cops in Florida will vouch that I had some sort of personal vendetta or weird obsession with your father, paint me as a paranoid or worse.”

“Probably.” She tapped her ash on the floor.