Part 15 (2/2)

It was just a little brown pocketknife, with handy attachments.

Unfortunately, the only one of use to me was the blade.

I stood. I had the knife gripped so the blade pointed upward; all the fictional crime I'd read told me that was the way to use it. I should try to come in under his ribs, I recalled.

I worked my way around the car and stood perhaps twelve feet behind Paul. I was curiously indecisive. Should I sneak up and stab him? Should I scream and run headlong over the gra.s.s? The nature of the ground, broken by headstones and footstones, pots of flowers, and a toddler's grave heartbreakingly decorated with a tiny baseball mitt, forbade the scream-and-run approach.

So I began to step quietly over the gra.s.s, not daring to look at Martin, focusing on the spot low in Paul's back where I would drive in the knife.

My bare feet made scarcely any sound, and Paul was still talking.

”You've never valued her enough, you can't give her the devotion she needs,” he was telling Martin. ”You go out of town all the time and leave her alone. A husband should stay with his wife. Leaving her with the hired help, you see now that couldn't work! And you let people hurt her. If you really loved Aurora, you wouldn't let these people hurt her!”

I was absolutely determined to kill this man and save Martin's life, but now that I was close to him, I realized I should have run full-tilt after all. This creeping, this planning, was making my soul sick. I could feel sweat pop out on my forehead. My hands were shaking.

I was a yard behind Paul now, and I registered the fact that he'd taken off his suit coat after the funeral-one less layer to penetrate. This was so much harder than I'd ever imagined.

I bit down on my lip, took the last step. My left hand went up to grip his shoulder as my right hand drew back, then plunged in the knife.

Paul made a horrible sound, and his s.h.i.+rt became reddened in a widening circle. I let go of the knife and jumped back to be out of his way when he fell, and he said, ”Walk around where I can see you or I'll shoot him this second.”

I wanted to throw up.

I'd done it. I'd stabbed a man I knew. And there he stood, not falling, not defeated. I did as he said, though my legs were trembling so much I didn't think I'd make it.

The knife, so much heavier at the handle than the blade, slid out of the wound and fell to the ground. I made a horrible noise, but not as horrible as the sound of that knife meeting the dirt.

For the first time I met Martin's eyes. His face was unreadable. He might have been made of stone.

Paul's face was more open. He'd been pouring himself out to Martin, and he hadn't closed the emotional doors yet. He was anguished when he saw his attacker was me.

”Oh, Aurora, how could you do this?” he said wonderingly.

I was so shaken, I found myself on the verge of apologizing.

”You have to spare Martin,” I said to him, willing him to be swallowed up in my intensity.

”Look over there, Aurora,” Paul said gently. ”See the bed of flowers I've got for you?”

The ”bed of flowers” was the funeral arrangements spread neatly on the freshly turned dirt.

”I'll kill him and we'll share the bed of flowers. You deserve something that beautiful, that fragile. You're so beautiful and fragile yourself.”

I shook my head hopelessly, not knowing what to say. Paul was crazy, but not so crazy he couldn't function in his job. I didn't think I could deceive him, since a large part of his work lay in detecting deception.

”Paul, I am willing to go with you if you'll let Martin go,” I said. The seepage of blood had slowed, but not stopped. I felt as if a dog had ripped me up and left pieces of me all over the clipped green gra.s.s. I felt the tears beginning to flow. I might not be able to save my husband or myself. I had one more chance.

I held out my arms to Paul Allison and I stepped a little closer. ”Paul, listen, you're-I'm so sorry,” and I began to cry in earnest, but I didn't cover my face, didn't let my arms drop.

”You have to stay where you are, honey,” said Paul. His voice was faltering. ”Please don't cry.”

”No,” I said, and kept on moving slowly, inch by inch, until I wrapped my arms around Paul, holding his to his sides. I laid my head against his chest; how strange it felt to be holding someone built differently from Martin; taller, thinner, less muscled. I could feel Paul's heart beating beneath my cheek. I had sunk a knife into this man's body. His blood was staining my left arm and hand.

And I felt his extended forearm fall to his side, the arm holding the gun. I heard the thud as the gun fell to the gra.s.s. I felt both his arms circling me, pulling me closer to him for the first and last time.

He buried his face in my hair.

”Sweet,” he said, and then Martin clipped him in the head with the gun b.u.t.t.

We had a hard time getting ourselves believed, even after Lynn told the other cops that Paul, his heart overflowing under the emotional pressure of the funeral, had confided in her that day, following Jack's interment, that he was ”deeply involved” with me. He also told her some of the same points he'd raised against Martin; that Martin was an absentee husband, that Martin permitted slander against my name.

To say the least, Lynn was highly skeptical and dubious about all Paul's fantasies. And she knew me well enough to know that's just what they were.

But she wasn't happy to testify against a fellow officer. No one on the police force was delighted to be told that one of their number had murdered another officer, one female civilian, and attacked a male officer and a male civilian.

And Paul popped back into a more rational frame of mind to deny everything except that he had a real crush on me, not exactly an unknown situation. He said that Martin and I had attacked him unprovoked, that I'd misunderstood certain things he'd told me, and that Martin had then pulled Paul's gun from Paul's holster and hit him with it.

That was not exactly a st.u.r.dy defense, no matter how much the police wanted to believe one of their own. And there were stains matching Arthur's blood between the seat cus.h.i.+ons of Paul's car. And there was a matching stain left on the handle, a stain not washed off by Paul's own blood. Then Jenny Tankersley, that tough flier, came forward to tell Lynn that she'd seen Paul practicing sharp banking moves in one of the small planes she rented, and that she'd noticed something odd; he was opening the pa.s.senger door of the little plane while he was flying, then banking to let the door slam shut.

”I knew it was someone after you,” Angel said one day, the day Paul finally confessed to Jack's murder.

”You did?” I said. ”Sure.”

”You thought it was me, but I knew it was you. You just weren't looking at it straight.”

”You seem much more a candidate for obsessive love than I,” I said stiffly.

”It's not your fault,” she said, shading her eyes against the sun. We were lying in our swimming suits on the sundeck, cold drinks at hand. I was trying desperately to feel as lighthearted as the day and the frivolous occupation should have made me. There was not a cloud in the sky. I glistened with oil as though I were going to be fried. I hadn't tried to get a tan in years, avoided the sun as I would the plague. And yet here I was, trying to lighten up my life.

Angel was lying on her back, and I stole a glimpse at her stomach. It was definitely convex.

”That's not my my fault,” she said. fault,” she said.

I closed my eyes and felt myself flus.h.i.+ng.

”You gotta work that through, Roe. Or you'll go crazy. There are pregnant women everywhere.”

I nodded. I hoped she was watching.

”You know when the baby comes, Shelby and I gotta find somewhere else to live.”

”I figured,” I said quietly. I turned over on my stomach and buried my face in my arms.

<script>