Читать книгу Hollis Grant Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Joan Boswell - Страница 22

Knox, grunting and swearing, dragged Hollis across the room. He stopped at the top of the stairs. Teetering on the brink with the prospect of a fall, she tensed. The thought of the pummelling her body would endure made her feel like a helpless terrified boater swept along in the Niagara River, aware that the increasing roar of Niagara Falls heralded the awesome plunge of water and a cataclysmic death.

Knox dropped her winding sheet, walked to her head, placed both hands on her shoulders and shoved.

She plunged over the edge. Her body, which she tried to keep limp, and her head, which she attempted to protect from the worst of the skull crushing thuds, registered everything.

Stair followed stair. The arm twisted behind her wrenched farther back with each jarring crash.

Hollis tasted bile, blood and the dryness of fear. She lost count of the number of steps she thudded down before the flight ended.

Knox, the model Christian, swore steadily as he hauled her along the second floor hall to the next set of stairs. After a brief respite, he pushed and she crashed step by pain wracked step until she stopped halfway down, wedged crosswise in the stairwell. Knox pushed from above and, when that didn’t work, climbed over her and tugged from below.

The doorbell rang.

Hollis’s spirits soared and immediately plummeted. What if Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons waited at the door? They’d ring and go away when no one answered. But it might be Simpson. She clutched at the possibility like a drowning swimmer.

Knox swore.

Hollis didn’t breathe. Hapless boaters swept away in the Niagara River must feel like this when a rock outcrop on the brink of the hereafter miraculously saved their lives. She prayed Knox would answer the door.

Knox walked downstairs. Hollis remained wedged across the stairs with her head on a lower step, her body sprawled over two upper stairs. The sound of his footsteps clumping downward receded. Distantly, she heard him open the door.

Blood pounded in her ears. She feared it would drown out the voices at the door. If Simpson had arrived, she had to attract her attention. She felt like a “Wheel of Fortune” player with one last roll and Bankrupt coming up.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Porter. I have a couple of questions for you. May I come in?”

Simpson.

“I’m busy. Could it wait until tomorrow?”

“It’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

“Very well. It’s chilly—we’ll go in my house. I was itemizing the stuff up in the apartment we’re using for the refugees, but I’ve finished.” His voice was amazingly calm considering what he’d been doing seconds before.

“Ms Grant told me. I understood she was coming here tonight?”

“Quite right, quite right. She came but didn’t stay long.”

Knox would manoeuvre Simpson out of earshot. Time to act.

Gagged, it was impossible to scream, but she made as much noise as she could. Simultaneously she thrust her body forward into the void, catapulted through the air and crashed headlong down the stairs. When she caromed off the landing’s corner post, the elbow twisted behind her caught and the force of the fall tore her shoulder outwards from her body.

The keening of a siren penetrated a confused dream of an endless face-up fall with a crowd of grimacing, bodiless faces raining stones down on her. The frightening scene faded, and she opened her eyes to a face inches from her own.

What had happened? Carefully, she moved her eyes. When that went okay, she lifted her head. A wave of dizziness followed by nausea forced her down. Where was she?

A flashback of herself hurtling downstairs. Knox had been going to kill her.

Where was Knox? What had happened to Simpson? She ran her tongue over her dry lips and whispered to the face looming over her.

“What happened?”

“I’m glad you’ve come around. You had a bad fall and were unconscious when we reached you. You’ve banged your head pretty bad, and your shoulder’s dislocated.”

“What about the other man?”

“You were the only one injured. When we arrived, you and the police were there. No one else.”

After the attendants gently decanted her in the emergency ward of the Municipal hospital, she endured increasingly painful pokes and prods from the emergency room staff. When the resident was ready to set the dislocated shoulder, she pleaded for a painkiller, but the young man refused.

“I can’t give you any. You have a concussion. I’m sorry—I’m aware of how much this hurts, but we have to pull it back in place and patch you up before we send you upstairs, where we can keep an eye on you for the night. We’ll wake you every hour until we’re sure you’re okay.”

Her polite, civilized, middle-class mask in place, she said she understood and thanked the resident even as he pulled and pain surged through her. An orderly wheeled her to the elevator and deposited her on an upper floor. He rolled her into a bed in a four-bed room. Before she did more than glance at the other occupants, the curtain around the bed was pulled, whirring in its track, to enclose her in a tiny world where the hourly arrival of the nurse rescued her from confused and frightening dreams.

Very early in the morning, a doctor breezed inside her curtained sanctuary and examined her. “You’re okay. Your pupils are normal. I expect you’re pretty sore.” He took out his prescription pad. “This is for Tylenol 3 with codeine. Your shoulder will hurt and be awkward—use the sling to stabilize it until you recover. Take these—the dosage is on the bottle—and see your own doctor next week. You’re free to go, but have someone come and pick you up.” He handed her the prescription and displayed his mastery of the physician’s backward two-step, an agile move designed to extricate busy doctors from encounters with all but the quickest and most persistent of patients.

Hollis smiled at the performance as she levered myself upright—not an easy move with one arm immobilized, every inch of her body hurting and her head aching. Out of bed, she shuffled her resisting flesh through the encircling beige curtain and glanced at the room’s other three occupants. Without her glasses, they were all a little fuzzy, but she saw two were of indeterminate age—lank, untended hair, a patina of illness and no makeup made it impossible to guess whether they were thirty-four of fifty-four. The third, perched alertly against her pillows, wore a bed jacket of fluorescent crocheted circles that would have dimmed the vitality of a bloomingly healthy teenager, let alone its wearer, who would not see eighty again.

Nevertheless, with a snap of bouncing curls and the purposeful adjustment of gold-rimmed glasses, she managed to overwhelm her coat of many colours. “And what have you been up to, young lady? Last night there was a policeman sitting outside the door. We figured a felon had joined us.” She giggled. “I even peeked to see if you were handcuffed or shackled to the bed.”

A policeman—Simpson hadn’t caught Knox and had been afraid he might try to kill her. Was he still there? Hollis creaked across the room and peered into the hall. The chair outside the door was unoccupied.

“You didn’t need to do that—I could have told you—he left at ten after five. The duty nurse told him he’d had a message that you weren’t in danger any more.” She chuckled, “That’s when I felt sure you weren’t the criminal. But, young lady, you do realize we had a bad night’s sleep because of you—we woke up every hour on the hour when the nurses came to check on you.”

It was a long time since anyone had addressed her as “young lady” and, ironically, on this particular morning, she felt anything but young. “I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my idea.” She temporized. “I had an accident. I fell downstairs. You probably heard the doctor say I’m okay.” Copying the physician’s two-step, she eased herself to the bathroom.

The battered face in the mirror startled her. Her nose swollen and bruised took up half her face. She touched it gently and wondered if it was broken. She’d ask Tessa.

After pumping harsh pink hospital soap into her hands, she lathered, gingerly washed, and dried with paper towels. It wasn’t Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Salon, but she felt better. She vetoed substituting soap for toothpaste and rinsed her mouth with water.

Carefully, creeping like a stroke victim on an icy sidewalk, she moved to the nursing nation, humming with post shift change activity, and phoned Tessa. Even though she hadn’t been there for Hollis before, she was the one Hollis wanted.

“Tessa, it’s Hollis. I’ve had an accident, and I’m at the hospital. They’ve said I’m ‘fit to go home’. I know you don’t leave for work until nine, and I wondered if you’d pick me up.” Without waiting for a reply, she continued, “It’s an imposition, but I . . .”

“In the hospital. What happened? Which one?”

“The Municipal.”

“I’ll leave immediately. Have an orderly bring you down to the west side door. I’ll be there inside of fifteen minutes.”

On her return walk to her room, Hollis found she’d limbered up. Watched by the other three occupants, she pulled on her underpants and her yellow skirt but the bra and yellow top stymied her.

The woman in the psychedelic bed jacket took charge. “Forget the bra. Bring me the blouse. I’ll undo it and button it on over your sling.”

Hollis obeyed, thanked her benefactor, and wished the women speedy recoveries before she limped to the nurses’ nation and arranged for an attendant to wheel her to the side door, where Tessa bundled her into the car.

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story, but never mind about me for a minute. I’m the one leaving hospital, but you look like you’ve been hit by a bus. What’s the matter?”

Tessa responded by pulling to the side of the road and killing the engine. She turned to face Hollis. In an agitated voice, she said, “Hollis, I feel awful. I’ve avoided you when you needed me. I’ve been a terrible friend, thinking only of Kas and myself.”

Hollis wanted to reach out and pat Tessa, but with her immobilized left arm, she could only wait for Tessa to finish her speech.

“I have to tell you about me and Paul.”

Not Tessa, surely her wonderful self-possessed friend hadn’t fallen for Paul’s line. But why not—she had.

Tessa ran her fingers through her already dishevelled hair. “It’s ancient history. The beginning . . .” She paused and said, “No. Before I tell the story I have to share something else.”

Hollis didn’t think she wanted to hear what Tessa had to say.

“Simpson interviewed me repeatedly. You’re aware of how preoccupied I’ve been. I wanted to tell you why, but I couldn’t. It was really bothering me. I felt terrible when I didn’t come to the visitation, when I wasn’t there for you.” She leaned closer to Hollis. “You remember the Citizen had a description of the knife that killed Paul?”

What did this have to do with anything?

“The Citizen identified it as a boning knife. A week ago Sunday, we invited one of Kas’s colleagues for dinner. I decided a stuffed rolled roast of pork would be easy, but when I searched for the boning knife—no knife. I used another knife, but when I saw the picture in the paper . . .” Tessa’s voice shook. “Our knife, which is identical to the one in the photo, is still missing. After I read the article, I searched the kitchen again, but to no avail.” She gripped the steering wheel tight enough to whiten her knuckles. “I didn’t want to accuse Kas. Something was going on, but I didn’t know what and at that point I couldn’t do anything. We had to attend a testimonial dinner for the retiring Deputy Minister of Health, and both of us had speeches to give. Sunday I was on call, and Kas was playing golf. Although I worked yesterday, my concentration was shot. I wondered what the connections were and what Kas was hiding. Last night, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I woke him up at two thirty, and said we had to talk. Before I lost my nerve, I asked him point blank if he’d killed Paul.”

Tessa had believed Kas was the murderer.

“It was horrible. Kas couldn’t accept that I’d suspected him.” She rested her head on the steering wheel.

“He didn’t kill Paul—Knox Porter, a member of St. Mark’s, did it.”

“You’re kidding.” She lifted her head. “You mean the police have solved the case. That’s wonderful.” She shook her head. “Suspecting Kas wasn’t the only thing bothering me—there’s something else to tell you.”

Hollis didn’t want to listen. Knox’s revelations had been monstrous, but this might be worse.

“Years ago, when I was a medical student, I did a rotation at 999 Queen Street, the psychiatric hospital in Toronto. We had a pregnant fourteen-year old catatonic patient on one of the locked wards. She was detained on a Lieutenant Governor’s warrant, because she’d killed her father who’d physically and sexually abused her.” Tessa traveled the tunnel of memory. “I performed an abortion. Of course, I labelled it a D. and C. When my patient came out of the anaesthetic, I told her what I’d done, because I’ve always believed catatonic patients hear you even when they appear totally unreachable. I proved my point, because from then on she responded. She recovered and later was released and lives an ordinary life. I hear from her at Christmas. I’ve never regretted the decision. At the time, abortions were illegal. If anyone had blown the whistle, I wouldn’t be a doctor today.

“Tessa, it was a long time ago. Things are different, and it sounds as if it was a compassionate act performed at great personal risk.”

“Thanks. Your dear husband didn’t agree. Paul Robertson, good Christian, tracked down the story. He threatened to spill the beans and have me struck from the medical register.”

“Did he blackmail you?”

Tessa settled against the car door. “No.”

Before Hollis allowed herself to feel relief, Tessa continued, “That wouldn’t have been diabolical enough for Paul. He forced me to donate five hundred dollars a month to the Right to Lifers. I feel terrible not to have told Kas or you. What kind of a marriage do we have if I didn’t confide in him? We should have presented a united front and challenged Paul. Even if it had become public, surely the college of Physicians and Surgeons wouldn’t have done more than reprimand me for a humanitarian act performed decades earlier.”

Hollis shut her eyes, opened them and twisted to reach her right hand across her inert left arm. “I’m sorry. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but Paul was a stranger to me. I had no idea what he was capable of. And I only found out about some of the terrible things he’d done after he was dead.”

They sat in silence until Tessa leaned forward. Hollis was being assessed as a patient, not a friend. “My God, I’m not much of a doctor. Now that I’m really taking in your appearance, I realize you’re the one who needs help—not me. What happened?”

“As I said, Knox Porter killed Paul. Last night he tried to kill me.”

“Knox Porter. Isn’t he the man you described as wimpy? The one with the wife who always wears brown and repeats everything he says.”

“That’s the man. After he killed Paul, Knox broke into the manse, shot at me, sent a threatening letter, murdered Sally and intended to kill me too. He lured me to their third floor apartment, tied me up and dragged me down three flights of stairs to take me away and kill me. The problem is I don’t know what happened last night because I was knocked out. I came to in the ambulance. I think Knox escaped because a policeman sat outside my hospital room last night, probably because they were afraid Knox would come after me—he’d told me why and how he’d killed Paul. However, early this morning, the policeman received a message that I was no longer in danger and left. I presume Simpson and the police caught him.”

“Simpson? Where does she fit in the equation?”

“Simpson showed up at the last minute. I was gagged, but I made as much noise as possible and threw myself down the stairs. The ambulance attendant told me only the police were at the Porters’ house when they arrived.”

The women parked at the manse at the exact moment the door flew open, and Hollis had a blurry picture of MacTee galloping across the lawn to attend to nature’s needs. Standing in the open doorway, Elsie waited for him to finish.

Tessa helped Hollis out of the car. When Elsie saw them, she hurried down the steps. “What happened? Here, let me give you a hand.”

Inside, Tessa apologized for leaving, but promised to return later. Hollis collected a spare pair of glasses from the junk drawer under the kitchen telephone before she slumped at the table.

Rhona, who’d been up the entire night, received the news about Knox at five. She completed paperwork and phoned the hospital to hear they’d released Hollis. After washing her face and swilling down a cup of exhausted machine coffee, she headed for the manse.

Elsie, looking out the manse window, saw Rhona arrive.

“She’s here. I’ll brew a fresh pot of coffee—she appears totally beat.”

Hollis didn’t have to ask who “she” was and made no attempt to rise. Once she’d collapsed in the chair, she’d decided she might stay there forever.

Rhona sat down across from Hollis. “How do you feel?”

With a visible effort, Hollis produced a tiny smile. “Grateful to be alive. What happened to Knox?”

“Knox Porter?” Elsie asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened to him? Weren’t you going to his house last night?” she said to Hollis, who nodded.

Rhona debated how much Elsie should hear. “The situation is still fluid. Hollis, could I speak to you privately?”

Elsie picked up her cup. “I understand—it’s police business. You don’t have to leave. I’ll go upstairs and prepare a warm bath for Hollis and turn down her bed.” She didn’t give them a chance to argue but marched out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

They listened to her footsteps climbing the stairs then to a door shutting upstairs.

“He escaped. After you screamed and crashed downstairs, he ran into the house. I figured he’d be trapped inside and called an ambulance before I alerted the backup cars that I needed them. I wasn’t aware Knox’s house is a semi-detached, and there’s a door connecting the two basements. He simply walked out the downstairs door of the other house, jumped in his car and drove out past the police cars parked on the street.”

“Where did he go?”

“We didn’t have a clue. We put out an APB after we obtained a description of the car from the motor vehicles branch. We didn’t locate the car, but at four thirty this morning, I received a fax from Knox. In it he confessed to the murder and explained why—he was being blackmailed and couldn’t afford to continue paying. He also said he believed it was only a matter of time before Reverend Robertson revealed the details of a lurid event in Knox’s past that he had gone to great lengths to hide. In addition, he said he was about to kill himself. The fax was sent from a twenty four hour convenience store.”

“Who would have thought to do it that way?”

“We didn’t know whether to believe it or not. Then we had a cell phone call from an early morning jogger who found him dead in his car near the barns in the middle of the Experimental Farm. He’d run a hose—he must have had it in his trunk—from the exhaust and asphyxiated.”

“My God—that’s where he shot at me.”

“In Porter’s fax, he asked us to declare the case closed to save his family the grief of the publicity. He regretted having been caught but claimed he hadn’t had any choice; in order to live the life he’d made for himself, he’d had to stop Paul.”

“And can you keep it quiet?”

“Not a chance, but maybe we can prevent the more sordid details leaking to the press.”

“I’m not a great fan of Linda’s, but what a shock for her and the kids.”

“Sad all around.”

“Paul was a real life Jekyll and Hyde. He had good qualities and supported worthwhile causes, but his obsession with control and power led him to do horrible things.”

“It did. Before I go, I’ll tell you a bit more. I’ve already told you Reverend Robertson was blackmailing Knox and that’s why Knox killed him. Because of the activity in Reverend Robertson’s Gloucester account, we think Knox was one of many. According to Knox, the victims paid him cash and he deposited the money in the Gloucester Branch, wrote a cheque from ‘anonymous’ and sent it to the charities he thought would be most abhorrent to the persons he was blackmailing. He then gave them the receipts, instructing them to use them for their taxes; he must have known they never would. Really quite diabolical. As for the safety deposit box—he hadn’t used it for months. Originally it may have been a safe spot to store the master list for the book.”

“When I was waking and sleeping fitfully in the hospital last night, I had an idea about the master list.” Hollis tried to lever herself up with one arm and groaned. “Why don’t you check it out?”

Rhona eyed the kitchen clock. “I have to leave, but it would be good to tidy up one more item.”

“Remember how the chequebooks were in plain sight. I think he did the same thing with the list. In the book, he used fanciful pseudonyms rather than real names. I suspect he taped the list inside one of his reference books, a little book, I think it’s yellow, called The Annotated Onomasticon: The Little Book of Amazing Names.”

“Onomasticon?”

“It’s from Greek and it means ‘dealing with names’.”

Rhona’s eyebrows lifted, but she went off to Paul’s study.

Yellow book in hand, Rhona reappeared. She handed the volume to Hollis. “Since you were brilliant and thought of this—you deserve the honour of seeing if you’re right.”

Hollis tried to open the book, but using one hand she only managed to push it around the table. “I can’t. You do it.”

Rhona fanned through the book. The document was folded and neatly paper-clipped to the back cover.

“I’d like the names to remain confidential,” Hollis said.

“We’ll keep it in case it’s needed for evidence, but no one needs to be privy to the names.”

“That’s okay. When you’re finished, I’d like to turn the list over to my lawyer and, if the victims want the money, to have him use Paul’s estate to repay the blackmail.”

“You’d be a one-person victims’ rights society.”

“And I’m not gong to allow the publication of When Push Comes to Shove. It may have the potential to increase tolerance, but I think it’s more likely to be sensational and threaten the individuals whose privacy Paul invaded.”

“It’s certainly your decision.”

“Before you go, I want your opinion.”

Rhona, who’d risen, sat down.

“As I learned more and more about who Paul was and what he’d done, I wondered if he was a sociopath. What do you think?”

“According to psychologists, a sociopath has no conscience, no awareness of others’ pain and is intent on achieving his own ends. Mostly people think sociopaths are criminals, but in reality they exist in every walk of life, and as long as they’re smart enough to adopt camouflage, they succeed as top business executives, religious leaders—their ruthless disregard for those around them allows them to reach positions of power.”

“But why would he pick the church?”

“What better place to exercise power, to play with people’s lives, to hide his true nature.”

“Thanks—it’s the one explanation I came up with. It makes me feel a little better to realize he may have been a professional manipulator—I was way out of my league.”

Rhona, with a thousand ends to tie up, excused herself. As she drove away, she resolved to tender her resignation, to end her career with the Ottawa police with this case. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called Zack to share the good news.

Elsie must have been watching, because when Detective Simpson drove away, she clumped downstairs.

“I probably shouldn’t ask, but can you tell me what happened to Knox.”

“He’d dead. I’m sure it’ll be on TV and in the paper by tomorrow. He killed Paul.”

Elsie absorbed Hollis’s bald statement. For once, she had nothing to add, no bright encouraging words to offer.

“I can’t tell you any more. I would if I could.”

“I know you would. What a time you’ve had. I’ve run a nice hot bath for you. Why don’t you let me help you upstairs.”

Soaking in the tub, Hollis allowed the hot water and fragrant lavender bath salts to perform their soothing magic but knew nothing would ever be the same.

Paul’s murder had changed lives.

Tessa and Kas had gone through hell. She wondered if Kas would ever forgive Tessa and if Tessa would reconcile herself to her lack of faith in Kas. Marcus had already forgiven her, but the opening of old wounds couldn’t have been pleasant. With Sally gone, JJ and Daniel would be grief stricken. Marguerite would bear forever the weight of the suicide of the woman Paul had seduced. Denise’s life had changed because of Paul’s diabolical will. The Porters—she even felt sorry for Knox, pushed by Paul to act as he had.

Paul had a lot to answer for. Although it was never right to take the law into your own hands, she understood how Paul had trapped Knox and pushed him into a corner where he felt he had no other option but to cut off Paul’s tale with a carving knife.

Her own epiphany had begun in the first few paces of the marathon, but it hadn’t ended there. She’d learned about herself, about her ability to delude herself, to pretend things were okay when they weren’t. Somehow, although she’d backslide, she resolved to be more honest with herself in the future.

She drained the water and climbed out of the tub determined to make amends for some of the wrongs Paul had done. She carefully eased herself into jeans and a white shirt, replaced the sling, snuggled her feet in her comforting moccasins and walked slowly downstairs.

In the kitchen, Elsie poured her yet another cup of coffee.

“Try these butterscotch squares,” she urged, passing a cookie tin.

MacTee, sensing this might be the time he’d receive a treat, did what retrievers do and sat down. He’d long since discovered good things happened to dogs who sat. And it did. Hollis shared a morsel and prepared to learn to live after the fall.