Part 9 (1/2)
Now she was learning her own unexpected weakness for this one man.
It terrified her.
”I don't know what I feel like,” she said distinctly.
Archer watched Hannah for the s.p.a.ce of a long breath, saw her fear of him, and accepted it. He didn't blame her. She was no longer nineteen, with hope in her eyes and excitement in her smile. She had discovered that life was always unexpected and often cruel. She had learned to pull back, shut down.
To survive.
He wanted to argue that there was more to life than pain and death, that the Donovan family would take her in and accept her. Yet he didn't say a word. He had no right to demand that she step out of her protective sh.e.l.l and share her life, her laughter, her love. He was the one who had left her to heal a man who couldn't be healed.
But Len could hurt whoever tried to help him. And he had. The fear in her eyes was proof of it.
”Wouldn't life be grand if kindness outlived cruelty?” Archer asked with a neutrality that didn't quite hide the weariness in his soul. ”But it doesn't.”
He turned away, listing what had to be done in his mind. The sooner he found out what had happened to Len and Pearl Cove, the sooner he would be out of her life. Broome was first on the list.
”So Mad Dog Len had a partner?” the cop asked, watching Archer skeptically. The big Yank with the sweaty dress s.h.i.+rt, faded jeans, and a worn rucksack slung over one shoulder looked hard and much too controlled for a constable's peace of mind.
Archer nodded.
”That's good news for his widow,” the cop said, dragging a match across the metal nameplate that said ”Dave” and lighting a cigarette. ”No one here will lend her a dollar to rebuild.”
”Why? Pearl Cove isn't a license to print money, but it looks better than lot of businesses around Broome.”
”Hey, Dave,” someone called from the back of the hot, humid, tin-roofed cave that pa.s.sed for a police station. ”Your wife is on the other line.”
”Tell her five,” the cop called back. Then his faded green eyes focused on Archer with a show-me-something-new weariness. ”You want prosperous, mate? Try Cable Beach outside of town. That's where the rich tourists go.”
”I'm not a tourist and you haven't answered my question.”
”You're not a native, either, or you'd know that people around here wouldn't p.i.s.s on Len McGarry if he was on fire.”
”No worries,” Archer said neutrally, using a favorite Aussie response. ”He's dead. An accident, I'm told.”
”Too right.” Dave blew out a stream of smoke that did nothing to improve the thick, close air of the station house. ”McGarry drowned when a cyclone tore open a pearl-sorting shed and shucked him out of it like an oyster out of its sh.e.l.l.”
”Was there water in his lungs?”
”He was found floating facedown in six inches of ocean.”
”With a piece of oyster sh.e.l.l rammed between his ribs. Didn't that strike you as odd?”
Dave looked bored. ”You don't have many cyclones in Seattle, do you? I've picked up blokes that had soda straws shoved through their groin or arteries cut by flying palm leaves. At two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, a lot of normal things turn lethal. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, a piece of paper will slit your throat.”
”I know. The U.S. might be short on cyclones, but we're long on hurricanes and tornadoes.”
The cop grunted. ”A bit of oyster sh.e.l.l was the least of McGarry's problems. He looked like he was run over by a road train. If it hadn't been for his wasted legs, even his wife wouldn't have recognized the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
Abruptly Archer was glad that Hannah hadn't come to Broome with him. He had left her teaching English to eager children whose laughter and sparkling black eyes were like a tonic after all the grim memories of Len. Archer wished he could have stayed. He missed his niece's innocence and uninhibited smile. But Summer was half a world away, and Len's body was in the merciless here and now.
”If Len had been your brother, would you be investigating his death any differently?” Archer asked.
Thick, blunt fingers rubbed over the cop's newly shaved face. He sucked on the cigarette and exhaled smoke. ”I'd be crying.”
Archer almost smiled. ”So it was just an accident, is that it?”
”b.l.o.o.d.y right. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer bloke.” Dave's hand came up suddenly, cutting off any reply. ”Look, Yank. I'm not going to pretend that the world isn't a better place without that sorry sod. But if I was inclined to make trouble about his death and I'm not I'd be talking to his widow. Is that what you want?”
For a moment Archer didn't trust himself to speak. Jet lag was gnawing at him like a hangover, Hannah had been terrified beneath her brittle calm, and now this short-tempered Outback constable was threatening her.
”Hara.s.sing Mrs. McGarry would be stupid. You're not a stupid man,” Archer said evenly. ”May I see the body now?”
”You flew a long way to look at a dead man.”
”Yes.”
The cop waved his thick, sunburned hand, trailing a flag of smoke. ”Go see him, mate. He won't care. n.o.body will.”
With wary cop's eyes, Dave watched Archer walk away. He didn't know what was on the Yank's mind. He didn't want to know. Working as a constable out beyond the Black Stump had taught him that there were two kinds of men: bad men, and bad men to cross. Bad men didn't worry him. Men like Archer did.
The place where Len's body was being stored looked like what it was, a processing plant for the Kimberley shorthorn cattle that ran through Australia's West like a hoofed red plague. But it wasn't the right season for slaughter, so the meat locker was cold and empty except for three cyclone victims. Two were fishermen. One was Len. All three were covered with what looked like old sheets. The unexpectedly powerful storm had overloaded the tiny funeral home. Bodies destined for cremation had been shunted off to less plush surroundings.
”He's the one over there,” the teenager said, his voice as rough as his red hair. He was too young not to be intimidated by death and too old to admit it.
”Thank you,” Archer said. ”I'd like to be alone with him for a time.”
”No worries, mate,” the kid said, relieved. ”Close the door hard when you leave.”
Archer waited for the door to close hard before he went to the table where Len lay. Even without the kid's instructions, he would have known it was Len; below the torso, the sheet was nearly flat on the table. He flipped the covering down far enough to see the face and chest.
He grimaced, but not for himself. The thought of Hannah finding this mangled, battered flesh made him want to cry out in protest. She didn't deserve to have that horrifying image sink into her mind, wellspring of future nightmares.
No one deserves all the good or the bad that comes their way. You take it the way it comes, one day at a time.
Hannah's words echoed in the raging silence of Archer's mind. They didn't calm him, but they made it possible to let go of some of the anger and shove the rest of it down with all the other brutal images breeding nightmares in his own darkness.
Silently, fighting for the emotional distance that was necessary for what he must do, Archer studied what had once been his half brother and mentor in the bleak arts of survival. He remembered Len as a Viking big, brawny, brawling, laughing like a madman one moment and stone silent the next. All of the silence and some of the brawn remained. Across the shoulders and in the arms, he was as powerful as Archer. The thick mane of blond hair had gone white in great, ragged streaks. Whatever marks rage or laughter might have left on Len's face had been erased by the brutal hammering his body had taken before and after he died.
The piece of oyster sh.e.l.l lay beside Len, as though no one had been certain what to do with it. Four inches long, darkly iridescent on one side and sea-roughened cream on the other, broken at both ends, the sh.e.l.l was shaped like a clumsy, ruined knife. Even against its background of battered flesh, the death wound was obvious on Len's ribs: it was a b.l.o.o.d.y, bruised mouth opened a ringer's width in shock. A knife would have left far less evidence.
Archer shrugged off the soft backpack he wore. The sweaty patch of s.h.i.+rt beneath turned cold the instant air touched it. He didn't notice, any more than he had noticed the chill of the room after the first shock. He reached into his backpack, shoved aside the laptop computer, special cellular phone, and fresh underwear until he found the pencil-slim flashlight he was looking for.
Icy white light stabbed out, striking a gleaming darkness and rainbow colors from the oyster sh.e.l.l's smooth inner surface. He picked it up and fitted it to the blunt, ragged, subtly curving wound between broken ribs. With only a slight pressure from his hand, he pushed the sh.e.l.l in; the previous wound was like a road hacked from a wilderness of intact flesh and bone.
When the sh.e.l.l would go no farther without being shoved, Archer bent and lined up the flashlight with the angle of the sh.e.l.l. It was dead on for the heart.