Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 21

He hoped it was Carolyn, hoped she could get into the boat and get away. But he knew she wouldn't.

Randy jabbed him again, painfully. Chip kept putting one foot in front of the other, sure each time that this step would be his last.

Because Randy was just waiting for a good place to kill him. Chip didn't know what kind of spot it would be. Soft earth, to dig a grave in, or by a fallen tree trunk that Randy could roll on top of him.

But whatever it was, when it came, that would be it. The end.

All done. And no one to save him. Randy poked him once more as Chip stumbled, caught himself, and resumed walking.

Nothing more to be done about it. In this way they proceeded together into the woods.

CHAPTER 9.

CHIP KEPT ON WALKING UNTIL RANDY TOLD HIM TO STOP at the edge of an old pit that looked as if it had once been mined for gravel. A rickety-looking old superstructure hung over it, built of timbers with a metal wheel bolted to it.

A fraying rope still hung down from the wheel. For hauling the gravel out, Chip imagined, as he peered down into the pit. Its steep sides were sandy, with a few dead, dry weeds poking up at intervals from the tan soil.

Pockets of stones interrupted the sand, extending downward in a flow pattern as if the stones had come out as a liquid, then frozen. Last summer's gra.s.s bristled yellow and brown in a narrow long-ago-cleared area all around the top of the pit.

A rough trail had led here, barely visible now, twin narrow tracks recalling the pa.s.sage of wheels. Chip noticed each separate thing in a sort of hyper-vision, the colors brighter and the edges of everything sharper than normal.

It was freezing out here, even more than on the boat. He was getting tired under the weight of the life jacket, heavy with its straps held tight by thick metal buckles. And it was damp; it had rained here sometime in the recent past, and he could smell the cold water at the bottom of the pit.

He supposed he should feel afraid, but he was long past that. He felt angry; he felt as if he had nothing to lose. So he said it as soon as he thought of it.

"The money's fake."

The words hung in the cold, clear air as if printed there. Chip felt Randy stop short right behind him. They'd reached the huge old white pine-a sentinel tree, that kind of big, solitary evergreen was called, he remembered irrelevantly-that he'd been able to see from sh.o.r.e.

Around it, the breeze made a rattling sound in the few brown leaves still remaining on the smaller maples and birches. About twenty feet up, a thick dead branch stuck straight out from the pine like the lowered arm of a railway crossing: Stop.

"How'd you know that?" asked Randy with what Chip knew was deceptive mildness. But he answered anyway.

"I looked. On the big boat, in your book." The memory of it sickened him: clippings and photographs.

"Between the pages where you'd hid it. Though I guess there must be more of it somewhere. Because ..."

"Shut up." Randy poked him in the back with the gun barrel. There was a long silence while, Chip supposed, Randy thought it over. Then: "I don't believe you." But it was clear from his voice that he did. Chip could practically hear Randy thinking now, trying to come to grips with it.

With how he'd been fooled. Chip was still trying to figure it out himself, how it had happened and what Randy might do when he knew: That his brother, Roger, had screwed him.

That, somehow, that was what the map had been all about. Not for Randy, but for someone else, and who would it be but Roger? And besides, something had always been wrong with the story.

No matter what Roger Dodd or anyone else said, there was no million dollars. Chip's belief in it and his attempt to get it had, like Randy's, been doomed from the start.

"How do you know?" Randy's voice, asking it, was as calm as if he'd been asking the time of day.

Keep him talking, Chip thought. "I looked at the bills. And they look real." Felt that way, too. Someone had gone to a whole lot of trouble printing them up. "But they've got identical serial numbers." And that meant counterfeit; there was no getting around it.

In as few words as possible, Chip explained this to Randy, felt him taking it in and believing it, finally: That it had all been for nothing. That the money had never been real.

That he'd been had. "You were supposed to bury it out here." Chip was trying it all out in his own mind by saying it aloud. "If things went wrong, you'd need someplace to stash it, where Roger could find it. And this was it." He looked down at the sandy soil at the foot of the sentinel tree. "Roger was supposed to come here later and check. That's what the map was for, to let him know where you'd put it. He'd go out to the buoy where he'd left the money; you'd have hung a map on the buoy for him."

Which now that he'd said it actually sounded straightforward enough so that Chip thought it was probably true: There'd been a bail out option. "But you lost the map and I found it," he said.

Randy kept listening. "If the money was here, Roger would know you'd had to leave it. He would take it back and you could try again to make the transfer later."

When, for instance, alerted border officials weren't looking for a guy with bad surgery, bad ID papers, and a satchel full of cash. The whole bailout option was a smart move on Randy's part, since lots of other things could have gone wrong besides the pair of them that had: first Carolyn, then Sam.

Carolyn had given Randy another ch.o.r.e to accomplish in Eastport: shutting her up, vanis.h.i.+ng her off the face of the earth. Then, just when Randy must've thought he had her taken care of, Sam had showed up at the wrong moment.

And finally Chip himself had arrived, yet another glitch in the plan. Still, Randy had handled it all well; was handling it now, even, by deciding whether to kill Chip or do something else.

Chip hoped the unexpected worthlessness of the money would nudge Randy toward the "something else" option, since whatever it turned out to be, it was probably not as terminally disastrous as a bullet in the head.

Meanwhile the moments dragged on as Randy stood there thinking about it: Which?

The gun was at his side. His face, in the thin morning light a map of scars and st.i.tch marks, wore no expression at all. But his eyes ...

His eyes, empty of emotion, inspected Chip clinically. Chip thought that under the circ.u.mstances this represented progress, until a grim smile curved Randy's misshapen lips. They resembled the fake wax lips Chip had gotten as a kid around Halloween, too big and red, as if they were already melting a little on the inside.

As if Randy's whole mouth were collapsing and his face might follow. Around them the forest brightened, daylight filtering in through the trees.

"How'd he do it?" Randy asked unexpectedly.

Roger, Chip guessed he meant. "Fake the money?"

Randy nodded.

"Easy," Chip replied. "All you'd need is a few real bills, plus a good scanner and a really good printer. But, I mean, most of them are really good now. Or good enough, anyway."

He was trying to fill the silence. "You'd scan in real ones. Then copy them, get a few on each sheet."

It wasn't quite that simple. Getting the right paper would be more difficult than it sounded, and getting the page set up to make the fronts and backs of the bills line up correctly would take some skill as well.

But it could be done. In fact, he'd researched a case where someone had, before Carolyn decided that counterfeiting wasn't a sensational enough crime to be worth a whole book.

"And there's another thing," Chip said.

Because as long as Randy was listening, he wasn't shooting. Also, maybe the way to keep Randy from feeling murderous about Chip was to get him feeling that way about someone else.

Roger, for instance. "See, floating the fake money out there was bad enough. But-"

Chip described in detail how at the very first opportunity, Roger had blamed everything on Randy, how he'd drawn himself as a victim in the whole scheme.

"So what I think is," Chip concluded-persuasively, he hoped-"I think if Roger hadn't gotten dragged in to talk to the cops, he'd have gone on his own."

The more he presented this theory, the more likely it began sounding, too. "I think he was gearing himself up for it, getting his story squared away so it sounded good, but his whole idea all along was to save himself by nailing you."

That's why Roger had cracked so quickly. Chip took a breath, hurried on before Randy could decide to shut him up. "Because he never meant to give you any money. So he had to get rid of you, right? Turning you in was one option."

"Okay," Randy said, nodding, and his voice still sounded so calm and reasonable that it gave Chip some hope.

"But here's the thing," Chip said. "You're not entirely screwed. Even counterfeit money is worth something. And I happen to know somebody who-"

Will buy it from you, he meant to finish. Ten cents on the dollar, but hey, a hundred grand. Better than nothing.

And he did know someone. Years of research, both online and other wise, had turned up a lot of interesting characters, many of whom had nontraditional ways of earning a living.

But he didn't get a chance to say so because just then Randy raised the weapon and shot him.

It felt to Chip as if the ma.s.sive pine tree had swung down and smacked him in the chest. He took a step back into thin air, over the edge of the pit.

As he fell, the sky and trees sailed in circles up and away from him, spinning and shrinking until they winked out.

CAROLYN HEARD THE SHOT FROM WHERE SHE LAY ON THE stones by the water's edge, trying to crawl. Sam lay a few yards away, where Randy had dropped him.

The boat, she had to get- Then came the sharp crack through the chill morning air. Chip, she thought, seeing his face so clearly that it was as if he were still right there with her.

But he wasn't. A dagger of grief pierced her. Gone ...

Out on the water, a flock of seagulls swooped low, crying excitedly. Then they settled again. Nothing else moved or made a sound.

A blurry line on the horizon might've been Eastport, its wharves and brick business buildings crowded along the bay and the white wooden houses rising behind, uphill from the water.

Or it might have been a trick of light. She pushed herself up on one elbow, then onto her two hands. Her nose was bleeding.

But every minute she was still alive was a minute to the good, she thought as she got her knees bent, sat up, and put a testing hand to her head where Randy had hit her with the gun.

Chip, she thought again, then realized with a jolt of terror that Randy Dodd would be coming back at any instant. It was what he had gone to do, kill Chip and put his body somewhere. So now ...

Now it was her turn. Suddenly she was so scared that she couldn't even feel any of the various parts of her that hurt so much. Only the fear, freezing her where she sat ...

The boat Chip had come in was a dozen yards off, pulled up onto the sh.o.r.e in front but with its back end floating. She'd seen how Randy had pulled the engine up, seen him start it, too.

She hauled herself clumsily into the icy water, so cold it made her whole body ache with a deep, dangerous throb that said this wasn't just uncomfortable. It was deadly, and she had to get out of it as soon as possible.

But not yet. She cast a terrified glance at the place where weeds and sea gra.s.ses gave way to the edge of the forest. No one appeared, but now she thought she heard heavy footsteps crunching nearer.

Hurry ... She pulled herself up, gripping the boat's rail in both trembling hands. Up and over ...

One hand slipped off; she fell back. Flailing, she clutched at the rail again and missed, then clamped her fingers around it. Her shoulders felt as if they were coming out of their sockets, and the awful cold made both hands numb.

But her fingers, even on the injured hand, finally locked on. Gritting her teeth, with a terrible effort she forced herself to her feet. The water sucked the sand from beneath them as she dragged herself higher, until her hips were on the boat's rail.

Crying as she did it. Weeping with fear. Only a little more now, though, just one solid push ...

A wave made the boat lurch, sending her tumbling forward. She let go and rolled, and crashed out of control into the boat's bottom, panting with terror.

Still no one stopped her. But the cras.h.i.+ng sounds through the brush on sh.o.r.e were louder now, and she could hear Randy Dodd's voice approaching, spewing a low harangue of profane complaining and cursing.

He sounded very angry, which was new for him. Something must have happened. Chip had done something, or said something ... .

She peered over the rail just as Randy appeared from between the trees with the gun in his hand, his strange face convulsed with fury. As he approached she fought her way up from the boat bottom, then got her chest up onto the transom seat in front of the engine.

His presence behind her, coming nearer, felt like a black, sucking hole, pulling her down into it. Lunging up, with both hands she raised the engine and got the propeller back down into the water, thinking, Where, oh G.o.d let me find the starter b.u.t.ton, where- She found it and pushed it. The engine grumbled to gurgling life. Now the throttle, how do you work the throttle ...

But it was easy, there were arrows on it to show you how to do it. Go, the girls in her head chorused sweetly, their voices a dead choir. She turned the sleeve on the throttle.

Yes, she thought exultantly in the instant before the engine revved with an agonized whine, shooting the boat forward a dozen feet or so to where it beached itself with a sc.r.a.pe of metal on rocks. Something in it banged once, then it stopped dead.

She hadn't thought to put it in reverse. And now ...

Randy stopped also, raising the gun. Fish in a barrel, she thought as he aimed it lazily, c.o.c.king his head slightly to one side as if wondering how many shots it would take.

Or how few. Carolyn held her breath and it seemed everything else did, too: the water, the sky. Her heart. Even the dead girls were silent as he stood there, seeming to consider: Kill her now? Or later?

This isn't happening, Carolyn thought as the small dark eye at the end of the gun barrel gazed flatly at her. But it was, and as she realized this she saw his arm move and his eyes narrow. He was adjusting his aim a little. No ...

Before she could even think about it, she was rolling to the left, hurling her body over the side of the boat, hitting the icy water and choking on it. No, she thought, no, no- Under the boat. If she could get under there, maybe there was a chance for her still. Her hands felt around blindly in the cold water, now thick and gritty with stirred-up sand. Maybe there was an air pocket under the boat- Maybemaybemaybe, the girls sang. She opened her eyes, heedless of the way they stung in the salt water, fought her way past the propeller, a silvery clover shape turning loosely in the current.

And then she saw them, their drowned pallid faces and dark dead eyes all turning toward her at once. Their hair streaming, their mouths moving. Their long, graceful fingers beckoning.

Their broken fingernails. And their smiles ... mocking her. Terror worse than any Randy Dodd had ever inspired went through her. Because they weren't encouraging her, were they?

Those girls in her head, the ones she'd earned her bread and b.u.t.ter on, whose agonies had brought her a fortune. Made her ...

Famous, they all whispered gleefully. Don't forget that. They weren't helping her. They were luring her. Suddenly she knew why: They wanted her to be one of them ... .

She wouldn't be able to hold her breath for much longer. Suddenly a hand reached down in front of her, fingers searching.

Fright punched the breath out of her. Bubbles rose past her face, and in the next instant he grabbed her hair, dragging her up and out of the water. She coughed up bits of seaweed, heard a voice shrieking.

Her own voice. He shoved her back into the boat. Not even bothering to keep an eye on her while she lay there gasping and shaking, he found a small plastic box under the transom seat and selected some small parts out of it.

Swiftly he pulled the engine up, removed something from the propeller and tossed it aside. He'd done this before, she could tell, as he replaced it without hesitation with the part from the plastic box, then lowered the engine again.

She'd broken something on the engine, hitting those rocks with it. But he'd fixed it. Whatever he'd done was routine, easy if you knew how.

When he had finished, he seated himself by the tiller, facing her. "Change of plans," he said, and started the engine.

BACK IN EASTPORT, JAKE SAT IN THE MEDICAL CLINIC WAITING room until her name was called, then let her ankle be x-rayed, p.r.o.nounced unbroken, and wrapped in a pressure bandage so tight she thought her toes might pop off.