came out of the dark and slammed into the side of my head. My knees sagged and he caught me by the belt and threw me into the side of the Beemer. The breath flew out of me in a stinging gasp, and I lost my footing and went down.
Paul Cortese stepped into the circle of light. He was bent over slightly and rubbing the side of his knee and whimpering softly. Tears rolled down his big face and left pale tracks on his skin. I came up fast from a crouch and drove my right fist into his midsection, just below the sternum. He yelped and coughed and staggered back half a step and I stepped forward and threw my elbow into his windpipe. Or that was the plan.
Cortese brought his thick hands up and caught my arm and grunted and pushed. I skidded into the car and hit it with my shoulder and yelled. Cortese looked down and rubbed his gut and made a mewling sound that chilled my blood. Tears spilled from his cheeks. He looked up, and his face was clenched and dark with rage. His eyes were black and full of madness. I turned and slid over the Beemer’s hood, and as I did I stretched out my good arm and knocked the lantern off the roof of the car. The barn went black.
I rolled and scrambled in the dark and stopped when my back hit a wall. My heart was hammering and my breathing was ragged and the rushing in my ears blotted out the rain and the wind and whatever sounds Cortese might be making. I inhaled deeply to slow things down, and I stared into the blackness and strained to hear.
Cortese was sniffling and crying and moving around, but he was near the car and he didn’t seem to be looking for me. I heard a clinking sound, like tools bumping together, and a click, and a thin white beam of light moved across the Beemer and onto the ground nearby. Shit.
Cortese put a flashlight on the car hood and stood in its light. His shadow was huge and misshapen and he looked like a golem as he bent to his work. He lifted the roll of sheeting easily and unfurled a large swath on the floor. Then he reached into what looked like a tool bag at his feet and came out with a carpet knife and cut the plastic. He cut open the package of duct tape, pulled out a roll, and tore strip after strip of tape from it. It made a noise like static.
I stood and leaned against the wall. Hitting Cortese was like hitting wet clay, and my right hand and arm were sore. I shook them out and thought about doors. To my right somewhere was the sliding door that was chained and locked, and that would get me exactly nowhere. Nearby to that was the ladder to the hayloft, where my chances were little better- assuming I could get up the ladder in any reasonable time. Somewhere to my left and across the barn- somewhere on the other side of Cortese- was the wide Dutch door. If I got out, it would be through there. If I didn’t, I’d be dead.
I tucked my left elbow up against my ribs and tucked my left hand into my belt. I took a deep breath and began to edge forward. Outside, the rain and wind suddenly subsided and it grew quieter in the barn. There’d been no lightning for a while now, and the thunder was rolling away. I heard Cortese’s mutterings plainly, and the rattling noise of stiff plastic. If I could hear that, he could hear me- and the longer I waited the quieter it would become. I needed to move. I edged forward again and to the right- and I saw light.
It was a hard blue-white color, and for an instant I thought it was lightning. But it swept in an arc through the barn’s high windows and across the walls and I knew that it was a car. And then I heard the engine.
Cortese heard it too, and he stood very still and listened. The engine grew closer and the sound of tires on gravel came with it. Cortese picked up his flashlight and moved away from me, to the door, and I heard the scraping of the latch. And then the car horn soundedonce, twice, three times- each time a sonorous bark. It was the Audi. It was Jane. I rushed at him.
Cortese heard me in the dark and turned, and I drove my right shoulder into his chest. He grunted and swayed and swatted me across the back, and his flashlight went flying. I stumbled backward, pivoted into a clumsy roundhouse kick, and caught him someplace soft. He made a surprised sound and suddenly his big hands were on my throat. He brought me close and what little breath I had was filled with the stench of him. My hand scrabbled across his face and my thumb found an eye socket, and Cortese squealed and threw me away.
I landed on my shoulder in an explosion of pain, and rolled on my back, wheezing. Cortese’s flashlight was on the ground, maybe fifteen feet away, and he picked it up and pinned me in its beam and came closer.
And then the lights in the rafters flickered and came back to life. Cortese looked up at them, and when he did I drove my heel into his crotch. He roared in astonishment and pain and staggered sideways, bent over. I held on to the Beemer and climbed to my feet, gasping, and the Dutch door swung in. I gathered my breath to shout to Jane- to warn her- and let it out in a long sigh when two Berkshire County sheriff’s deputies stepped in. My legs began to shake and I slid down the side of the car and sat on the ground.
35
One storm was passing, decamping to the east and dissolving at its trailing edge into icy stars and a crescent moon. And another storm was brewing, with Calliope Farms at its swirling center. I sat in the back of a sheriff’s department truck that smelled like old socks, and Jane sat in her Audi, and all around us a carnival had gathered, of big official vehicles, gaudy flashing lights, and bulky uniformed men. The last of my adrenaline was seeping away and I felt vaguely nauseated. I fiddled with my ice pack and my sling, but the pain in my shoulder was relentless.
The two deputies who’d been first on scene were young- no more than twenty-five- and they were sodden despite their rain gear. They’d come into the barn looking irritated and tired, but that had all changed when I told them what was in the car and when Paul Cortese made an incoherent noise and a clumsy lunge for the door.
They’d wrestled Cortese to the ground, and cuffed him, and walked us to their SUVs. I’d seen the Audi on the lawn, and Jane’s tense, pale face in its rain-spattered windshield. I’d waved to her but gotten no response. The deputies told me to keep still and keep quiet, and they’d put Cortese in one truck and me in the other.
I’d watched the vehicles arrive in ones and twos: Lenox PD cruisers, another sheriff’s 4 x 4, a fire truck from Lee, and the Pittsfield EMS. The EMS techs climbed into the back of the sheriff’s car to look at Cortese, who had apparently lapsed into something like a catatonic state. Afterward, a deputy motioned me out of the truck and the techs had looked at me. They’d flashed lights in my eyes, cleaned the cuts on my face, and rigged a sling and an ice pack for my shoulder. Then the deputy put me back into the truck. No one had questioned me beyond name and address and a few other basics. They were waiting for the boss. I hitched up my sling and rearranged the ice pack again, and finally he arrived.
A caravan of cars and SUVs pulled onto the lawn behind the Pittsfield EMS wagon. They were gray and dark blue and bore the seal of the Massachusetts State Police. A heavyset fiftyish guy got out of the first car and came up the small hill toward the house, and a squad of troopers and crime-scene techs followed. The local cops greeted him deferentially.
He huddled for a while with them and with his own people, and he seemed to do more listening than talking. He was about five-ten, with a big head of wavy gray hair that needed cutting. His face was broad, with drooping features, an unkempt gray mustache, and a day’s growth on the jaw. He wore a tan baseball jacket, zipped up, and jeans, and he kept his hands in his pockets as he listened and nodded and occasionally glanced in my direction.
He dispatched one team of troopers and crime-scene guys to the barn and another to the house, and he sent a remaining trooper back down the hill to the cruisers. He stood alone near the farmhouse and looked around at the men and cars and lights until the trooper returned and handed him a large Styrofoam cup. Then he went to the Audi and knocked on the glass.
Jane ran the window down and the man bent his head and offered his hand. They shook and spoke and he proffered the cup. Jane took it and the man climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. I saw Jane sip at what was in the cup and nod her head, but soon the windshield fogged and I could see only shadows. After forty- five minutes, he came to talk to me.
He climbed into the front passenger seat and brought a smell of pipe tobacco with him. He looked at me through the metal grate. His dark eyes were weary, but even so, and even through the grate, he managed an avuncular twinkle.
“Smart lady,” he said. “Very smart. And tough. That was a hell of a blow to go driving in, especially in a wind-up toy like that and on these roads. She must’ve been plenty worried to do that. She must like you.” His voice was deep and intimate, with a distinct Boston accent.
