Rage Against the Dying

Forty-nine





Emery walked into the office with his shotgun and the jar of pickled pigs’ feet. He stood the shotgun in the far corner leaning against the wall and placed the jar on his desk. “I don’t want to forget to take this,” he said, and went on as if in mid-conversation. “Even though, after Kimberly’s sister—you found they were sisters, right?”

I nodded.

“—came in about six years ago looking for a job,” he ran a thoughtful hand down the side of the jar, “it lost its appeal. The whole business lost its appeal, and besides, Cheri alive made a much better souvenir. Every time I made love to her she reminded me…” He stroked Cheri’s dead hair on the way to his chair behind the desk, where he filled his pipe with the cherry-bourbon tobacco whose smell I could never hope to forget.

“You know what they say about the seven-year itch.” He lit the pipe, puffed it a few times, and pressed a button on what looked like the stereo console behind his desk. We all listened to our voices:

“Talk fast. Are you on something?”

“I’m sorr—”

“Look at me, Coleman. I’m going to get us out of this. We’re both going to—”

I said, “You made your point: the whole place is bugged.”

Emery obligingly turned off the recorder and put a fresh piece of tape over Coleman’s mouth. “I’ve been listening to you for a long time, Brigid Quinn.”

“You could hear us talking wherever we were in the bar just by pressing the right button.”

“Oh, I don’t mean just recently in the bar.” He raised his voice into a mockery of a female, “Jessica? Jessica, are you there?”

He meant to taunt me. But remembering that night, thinking of how he had put the radio receiver headphones on and heard me call out for her, strengthened my conviction that one of us would die before much longer.

Emery watched me while relighting his pipe. He puffed, the smoke coming out the sides of his mouth like stray thought. “I couldn’t foresee that Floyd Lynch would know about that abandoned car, get himself caught, and use the bodies to make a deal. It would have worked out perfectly if you weren’t here to support Coleman’s suspicions.”

“And kill Peasil.”

“You did kill him?” Emery laughed, hiccuping a puff of pipe smoke out his nose. Seeing his plan come together without a hitch except for Cheri’s messy demise was making him feel more comfortable. “You know, I wasn’t absolutely sure about that, could only guess it was what happened.”

“I guess I spoiled that part of your plan.”

“Yes, but here you are again, so that’s okay,” he said. “Is there anything you don’t know? Have you told anyone else?” Emery frowned at the thought.

Keep him guessing. Even though Coleman was passed out on the floor, she still looked alive. Keep her alive. “Floyd Lynch wasn’t a genius. But he could remember what he read pretty well. And he had all your e-mails. Copied them over by hand to make it looked like his own words.”

“Isn’t it funny, Brigid Quinn?” He smiled to himself, as if he relished saying my name to my face after all these years. “You made me do this. I was contented with my little black souvenir for years until you and the agent came in here talking about how Lynch didn’t do the crimes. That was when everything started to unravel.”

His words had made me nearly lose my cool no matter what the consequences, but just then his attention was diverted from me to a knock at the front door.