cats. The intruder was in the guest bedroom, just a short hall length away. I could see the flashlight beam bobbing here and there; searching, searching again, for the damn
In response to my thoughts, it seemed, the light bobbed out of the guest bedroom, into the little hall, through the big archway into the living room.
When it was well within the living room, I slid off the bed onto my feet with the tiniest of thumps…
… and landed right on Madeleine’s tail. The cat yowled, I screamed, a startled exclamation came from the living room. I heard thumping footsteps and, when a blob was in the doorway, pausing, maybe fumbling for a light switch, I leaped. I hit someone right in the chest, wrapped my right arm around a beefy neck, and with my left hand grabbed a handful of short hair and pulled as hard as I could. Something from a self-defense course I’d taken popped into my mind and I began shrieking at the top of my lungs.
Something hit me a terrible blow on the back, but I tightened my grip on the short hair and my stranglehold on the neck. “Stop,” wheezed a heavy voice, “stop, stop!” And blows began raining on my back and legs. I was being shaken loose by all the staggering and my own weight, and I had to stop screaming to catch my breath. But I sucked it in and had opened my mouth to shriek again when the lights came on.
My attacker whirled to face the person who’d turned on the light, and in that whirl I was slung off onto the floor, landing not quite on my feet and staggering into the bedpost to collect a few more bruises.
Lynn Liggett Smith stood leaning against the wall in the hall, breathing heavily, the gun in her hand pointing at Torrance Rideout, who had only a flashlight dangling from his hand. If the flashlight had been a knife, I’d have been bleeding from a dozen wounds; as it was, I felt like Lee’s Army had marched over me. I held on to the bedpost and panted. Where was Arthur?
Torrance took in Lynn’s weak stance and huge belly and turned back to me.
“You have to tell me,” he said desperately, as if.she wasn’t even there, “you have to tell me where the skull is.”
“Put your hands against the wall,” Lynn said steadily but weakly. “I’m a police officer and I will shoot.”
“You’re nine months pregnant and about to fall down,” Torrance said over his shoulder. He turned to me again.
Lynn fired into the ceiling.
“Put your hands against the wall, you bastard,” she said coldly.
And he did.
He hadn’t realized that if Lynn really shot at him she stood an excellent chance of hitting me. Before he got the idea, I moved to the other side of the bed. But then I couldn’t see Lynn. This bedroom was too tight. I didn’t like Torrance being between me and the door.
“Roe,” Lynn said from the hall, slowly. “Pat him down and see if he’s got a gun. Or a knife.” She sounded like she was in pain.
I hated getting so close to Torrance. Did he respect the gun enough? Had he picked up on the strain in Lynn’s voice? I wished, for a moment, that she had gone on and shot him.
My only ideas about patting a suspect down came from television. I had a shrinking distaste for touching Torrance’s body, but I pursed my lips and ran my hands over him.
“Just change in his pocket,” I said hoarsely. My screaming had hurt more than Torrance’s ears.
“Okay,” said Lynn slowly. “Here are the cuffs.”
When I looked right in her face, I was shocked. Her eyes were wide and frightened, she was biting her lower lip. The gun was steady in her hand, but it was taking all her will to keep it so. The carpet looked dark around her feet, which were wearing slippers that were dark and light pink. I looked more closely. The darkness on her slippers was wetness. She had fluid trickling down her legs. There was a funny smell in the air. Lynn’s water had broken.
Where was Arthur?
I closed my eyes for a second in sheer consternation. When I opened them, Lynn and I were staring at each other in panic. Then Lynn hardened her glare and said, “Take the cuffs, Roe.”
I reached through the narrow doorway and took them. Arthur had shown me how to use his one day, so I did know how to close them on Torrance’s wrists.
“Hold out your hands behind you,” I said as viciously as I could. Lynn and I were going to lose control any minute. I’d gotten one cuff on when Torrance erupted. He swung the arm with the cuff on it around, and the flying loose cuff caught me on the side of the head. But he mustn’t get the gun! I gripped whatever of him I could grab, blinded by pain, and hobbled him enough to land us both on the floor, rolling around in the limited space, me hanging on for my own dear life, him desperately trying to be rid of me.
“Torrance, stop!” shrieked yet another voice, and we were still, him on top of me panting and me underneath barely breathing at all. Past his shoulder I could see Marcia, her hair still smooth, her blue shorts and shirt obviously hastily pulled on.
“Honey, it doesn’t make any difference anymore, we have to stop,” she said gently. He got off me to swing around and look at her heavily. Then Lynn moaned, a terrible sound.
Torrance seemed mesmerized by his wife. I crawled past him and past her, actually brushing her leg as I went by. They both ignored me in the eeriest way.
Lynn had slid down the wall. She was making a valiant attempt to hold the gun up but couldn’t manage anymore. When she saw me, her eyes made an appeal and her hand fell to the floor and released the gun. I took it and swung around, fully intending to somehow shoot both the Rideouts, our recent hosts. But they were still wrapped up in each other, and I could have riddled them both for all they paid attention to me. With the affronted feeling of being a child whose anger adults won’t take seriously, I turned back to Lynn.
Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was funny. Then I realized she was breathing in a pattern.
“You’re having the baby,” I said sadly.
She nodded, still with her eyes closed, and kept her breathing going.
“You called some backup, right?”
She nodded again.
“Arthur must have been out on a call; that was you on the phone,” I observed, and I went into the bathroom right at my back to wash my hands and get some towels.
“I don’t know nothin‘ ’bout birthin‘ no babies,” I told my reflection, pushed my glasses up on my nose, had the fleeting thought that it was nothing short of amazing they hadn’t been cracked, and went to squat by Lynn’s side. I gingerly pulled up her nightgown and lay towels on the floor beneath her drawn-up knees.
“Where is the skull?” Torrance asked me. His voice sounded defeated.
“At my mom’s house in a closet,” I said briefly, my attention absorbed by Lynn.
“So Jane had it all the time,” he said, in a wooden voice from which all the wonder was leached. “That old woman had it all the time. She was furious after the tree thing, you know. I couldn’t believe it, all those years we were good neighbors, then there was this trouble about the damn tree. Next thing I know, there was a hole in the yard and the head was gone. But I never connected the two things. I even left Jane’s house for last because I thought she was least likely to have it.”
“Oh, Torrance,” Marcia said pitifully. “I wish you had told me. Was it you who broke into all the houses?”
“Looking for the head,” he said. “I knew someone around here had to have it, but it never occurred to me it could be Jane. It had to be someone who could have seen me burying him, but not Jane, not that sweet little old lady. I just knew that if she’d seen me burying him, she’d have called the police. And I had to wait,” Torrance meandered on, “so long between each house, because after each break-in, people would be so cautious for a longtime…”
“You even pretended to break into our house,” marveled his wife.
Gingerly I stole a peek under the nightgown. I was instantly sorry.
“Lynn,” I told her hesitantly, “I see what I think is the baby’s head, I guess.”
