Pro Bono

Chapter 31

31

C harlie and Vesper were in their rental car driving on the broad, open interstate highway. Charlie had engaged the voiced directions to Blucher Lake on his phone while they were still in the hotel parking lot. He had listened carefully and followed the instructions that the female computer voice gave him until he had pulled onto the main highway, and then it said, “Continue straight for twenty-eight miles.” Since then, the voice had been silent. Every few minutes he would glance at his phone to see if anything new had appeared. The map showed a white arrow extending to the top of the screen and turning right. It looked the same, but the numbers changed, counting downward as the car approached the turn.

He said, “I’m sorry to drag you way out here into the middle of nowhere.”

“This is hardly the middle of nowhere,” she said. “We’re moving along a wide, clean, well-maintained highway within fifty miles of a couple fair-sized cities. If you don’t hit a bear or get a flat tire, we’re fine. Besides, I did volunteer for this.”

“Well, I’m feeling a little guilty.”

“As your mother pointed out, the mountains are pretty, the forests are pretty, and unless she’s lowered her standards, the lake will be pretty. I like pretty places.”

They kept going, and eventually the female voice woke up. “In two miles, turn right onto Blucher Lake Road.”

Vesper said, “There. See? We’re right on track.”

“I guess so.”

In about a minute the voice said, “In one mile, turn right onto Blucher Lake Road.” Soon they could see a street sign on a pole, and when they reached it, they turned. The voice said, “Stay on Blucher Lake Road for two point three miles.”

The road was paved and began as a two-lane asphalt surface. After about a half mile the stretches of asphalt began to be interrupted by an occasional spot where a sinkhole had been filled with gravel. The next half mile included some longer graveled spaces where the asphalt was marred by long ruts. Charlie tried to keep the tires on the paved parts and out of the ruts, but as they proceeded, the gravel spaces became more common and larger. The next stage was when the asphalt had disappeared, and there were only gravel stretches and strips of dirt road. Charlie raised the windows to keep the dust from getting into the car. He said, “I think this might be the middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Vesper said. “It’s not the middle.”

After another ten minutes the voice said, “In five hundred feet, your destination is on the right.”

It turned out to be true. After about five hundred feet, there was a gap in the solid wall of trees and they could see a large stretch of blue lake. “It looks nice,” she said.

“It does,” Charlie said. He went on slowly. “This seems to be the road that leads around the lake.”

She looked at the map on his phone. “I don’t know if I’d call it a road.”

He kept going. After a few hundred more feet they came to a two-car garage, then a house that at first seemed to be a large bungalow, but when they reached it they could see that the two-story plain part was only the front, and there was a tall A-frame roof behind it, and then after the house there was a structure farther from the road that had a dock leading out toward it. “I wonder if that’s it,” Charlie said. He kept going.

The road improved for a hundred yards or more before it began to get worse. He stopped. “What do you think?”

“I’ve been keeping my mouth shut, being a mere volunteer companion and all, but I don’t think we should go any farther. Whenever there’s a break in the trees, I look across the next part of the lake, and I don’t see any other houses.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “There’s some kind of a break up ahead. It looks like a trail goes up the hill to the left. It might make the road wide enough to turn around.”

Linda Warren’s paddling was bringing her kayak up between the two other women’s kayaks. She glided into the space and rested her paddle across her lap. “Well,” she said. “Just catching up was a pretty decent workout in itself.”

Wendy said, “I’ll bet. I was getting tired just watching you.”

“Is there something out here in this part of the lake that you wanted me to see?”

“No. But out here where it’s sunny and there’s a little breeze, there aren’t any bugs, and you get the best view of everything,” Mary said. She took a stroke with her paddle and glided closer to Linda.

“Well, it’s certainly a great view. I’ll give you that,” Linda said. She was feeling a mild irritation with the others, but as she thought about why—that she had wanted to explore the shoreline instead of the middle of the lake, but that they had made the decision without speaking to her—it seemed so trivial that she dismissed it.

Wendy took two strokes with her paddle and drifted close to Linda on the other side. It made Linda feel even more silly because in moving close they were trying without words to reassure her. She looked at Mary, and then heard a swish behind her as the blade of Wendy’s paddle swung and bashed the back of her head. She actually saw a flash, and the force of the blow propelled her forward so hard her face almost hit her kayak. She sensed that Wendy’s paddle would be rising to take another swing, but instead it jabbed at her like a spear and hit her ribs on her left side. Linda brought her own paddle backward to slice at Wendy, but as she did, she saw Mary.

Mary had taken a hatchet out from under the foredeck of her kayak and raised it to swing downward at her. Linda reflexively lowered her paddle and changed the motion into a paddle stroke. She shot ahead just as Mary’s hatchet chopped downward. The blade hit the hard plastic side of her kayak and bounced back, accomplishing nothing.

Linda’s mind caught up with the past two seconds. She knew that Wendy had hit her in order to incapacitate and distract her while Mary swung the hatchet from the other side. It was inescapable that they were murdering her. She didn’t understand how that could be, but she knew it and knew that she didn’t have time to wonder about it. She had already taken a strong paddle stroke and her arms were in position to take the next, so she did, and she paddled fast and hard, alternating sides and heading for shore.

She heard the sound of splashing behind her and knew it was both women flailing to make their kayaks move forward from a standstill to catch her. She had to fight this regardless of what her chances were to hold on to life. She seemed to have nothing to preserve her but whatever her body could do at this moment of this day. It was going to have to be enough.

Over a mile away, Charlie Warren drove up to the house and stopped. He turned off the engine and walked to the front door. He pressed the button beside it and heard the doorbell ringing. This was the only building that he and Vesper had seen since well before they’d left the interstate and driven to Blucher Lake. The doorbell seemed to be ringing from at least three places in the house. Whoever owned the place must be concerned that he never miss any visitors. Maybe nobody lived here all the time, and he was just a landlord who didn’t like waiting for tenants to admit him to his property. Charlie was sure anyone inside must have heard the bell, but after he’d waited for about thirty seconds, he rang the bell again. He waited, then knocked.

His mother had told him she and her friends were here for the lake and the woods, and those weren’t in the house. He walked back to Vesper and leaned close to her open window. “I don’t think they’re here. They’re probably out enjoying nature.”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a long way to come to sit in a house.”

“I’m starting to think this wasn’t a good idea. I emailed her that we were up here and she didn’t invite us to stop by, and we’ve never even met the other two women. I think we should just keep going the way we were headed and drive back to Reno. She knows she can call me.”

“Maybe,” Vesper said. “Sometime we can tell her we came all the way here, got embarrassed, and sneaked off. It’ll make a good story.”

He chuckled. “It is kind of funny.”

“It will be, anyway,” Vesper said. “After it’s over and well behind us. Before I laugh, I’d at least like to be sure the two who’ve never seen us don’t think we’re criminals and call the police.”

“Or shoot us,” he said.

“Not funny,” she said. “Too soon after that night in your office. Please, just call her.”

He took out his phone and pressed his mother’s number, then listened, but there was no answer. “Hi, he said. “It’s just me, your favorite son. I’ll try you again later. I hope you’re having fun.” He shrugged and put the phone away, then looked at the house.

“I’d at least like to look around for a minute to see if they’re right nearby,” he said, then started walking along the front of the house toward the boathouse. Vesper got out of the car, shut the door, and trotted to catch up. They turned the corner and walked toward the back of the house and the lakeshore.

The house reminded Charlie of an open treasure chest. The front of the place looked like a shoebox-shaped cottage. In the back was a section that rose up to form a glass-fronted living room with stylish furniture, polished wood floors, Persian rugs, and paintings on the walls. It opened onto a large wooden deck with stainless steel gas stove, wet bar, and the best view of the lake that he’d seen.

“Look!” Vesper said, and pointed.

Far off down the lake, there were bright yellow specks moving from about midway to the shore on his left. Two of them were close together, and another seemed to be leading them. He hadn’t seen any other human beings or signs of them besides this house and the neglected road. “Are those boats, or what?” he said.

“They’re too slow to be Jet Skis, but they seem about that size.”

“I think you’re right, but it’s hard to judge size or speed from this distance. Whatever they are, there are three of them. It could be my mother and her friends.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said. “If so, they’ll end up here at some point.”

“Unless this is the wrong house.” He said, “I’d like to see if driving the road in that direction gets us close enough to see. What do you think?”

She said, “At least it’s a plan, and I don’t have one, so that’s the plan.”

They walked back around the house to the front and got into the car.

Linda Warren was paddling at a rate that made her arms and hands strain to reach forward an extra inch and drag the blade backward another extra inch. Each stroke made her kayak roll from side to side a little bit, and she fretted because any lapse in form would take some of the speed away. Her ears were tuned only to the splashes of the other women’s paddles, trying to judge how near the sounds were coming from and how rapid the repetitions were without stopping paddling to look behind her.

Everything else in her mind was like sights barely glimpsed from the seat of a speeding car. Nothing could be thought through or verified, because all of it was so horrible that if it was true, she had only seconds to live and had to paddle harder. Had Mary really tried to kill her with a hand ax? Instead of an answer her mind told her that enough wounds could look like the blade had been the propeller of a motorboat. The image was worse somehow than just dying, and it made her determination and her will to ignore the strain and discomfort stronger.

She heard one of the women—Mary, it sounded like—shout at her, “Wait, Linda! It was only a joke.” She felt her chest swell with hope, because the voice had come from farther back than she would have feared, and Mary had just wasted a couple precious breaths shouting nonsense. She was beating them.

She was approaching the margin of reedy shallows near the shore now, and she looked for a clear place to land. She had to be on dry ground before either of the others, so they couldn’t get ashore and ready themselves to attack her together as she arrived. She was taller and lankier than the others, and she sensed that she could outrun them if she could get a start on them. She suspected that they were thinking the same thing, so she aimed the bow of her kayak straight into the reeds and tried to go faster.

The kayak glided into the reeds and she heard the silky whisper of them sliding along the sides and bottom of it. She paddled against the weeds until her kayak stopped, then got out and splashed to the low, pebbly shore, up onto the level ground, already veering to the right, away from the house, and began to run.

As Charlie drove beyond the house and the road began to curve gradually to the right, he noticed again that the pavement almost immediately seemed older and less cared for. It seemed likely that the contractors who had built the house had needed to improve and maintain the section from the intersection with the interstate highway as far as the house well enough and long enough so their trucks and earthmoving equipment wouldn’t get mired in mud or tip over. That must have been expensive—maybe more expensive than constructing the buildings. The portion of the road beyond it that circled the lake was another matter, and it obviously dated from an earlier time.

The car bounced along over bumps that may have been caused by almost anything—buckled sheets of pavement, the old roots of vanished trees, or underground rocks that were slowly becoming outcroppings. There were potholes deep enough to jar a driver’s jaw when a tire hit one. Before Charlie had driven a quarter mile, he had gotten out of the car twice to see whether a tire had gone flat or been knocked out of alignment. After the third time, he opened the driver’s side door and leaned in.

He said, “You know what I’m thinking?”

Vesper said, “Is it what happens if the car stops working?”

“That’s right,” he said. He looked into the forest that began only feet from the road, then back in the direction they had come from, then back at her. “I don’t relish the idea of backing up to where we started, but if we have to, I’d rather do it in daylight than after dark.”

“Agreed,” Vesper said. “If it will help, I can walk along behind the car and direct you away from the holes and ruts.”

“That’s very generous, but it’s a last resort. I want to go forward for another few minutes and see if we can find a place to turn around. If we don’t find one in, say, ten minutes, we’ll start backing out.”

“Okay,” she said.

They moved ahead slowly, trying to find a good spot, but noted only that the road was beginning to disappear, replaced by a stretch of pebbly beach. Then, after about ten minutes, there it was. The road was now impossible to see, and the pebbles were replaced by a flat shelf of slate-gray stone. It looked slippery and slightly tilted, but it jutted several feet out from shore, widening the space by that much. Charlie stopped the car and walked to the shelf to examine it. Vesper came with him.

“This looks like it,” she said.

“Let’s try it. I’ll turn to the left, back up and keep going as far as I can. You stand over there—not on the rock surface, but beyond it where the bank is pebbly, and stop me if I’m backing out too far.”

“Just be sure you can see me in your mirrors and I’ll keep you out of the lake.”

Warren got into the car, moved it onto the rock, and turned it to the left as sharply as he could, inching along until the grille came within inches of a tree. He turned the wheel all the way to the right and backed up until he saw Vesper waving her arms and shaking her head, then went forward again. It took them three back-and-forth cycles, but they ended up with the car facing the end of the lake where the house was.

He got out of the car and joined Vesper. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said.

“It sure is,” he said. He saw that Vesper had returned her attention to the lake. She was staring into the distance, and after a moment her face looked puzzled.

Warren stepped out a few paces on the stone shelf, trying to follow her gaze. “Do you see something?”

“No,” she said. “That’s the point. I mean, I see it, but it’s different. I only see two of those yellow boats or canoes or whatever they are.”

Warren said, “It looks like they’re going the other way.”

The two yellow kayaks were close together, and the two sisters were paddling steadily, their eyes on the edge of the tall pine forest above the bank, trying to be sure they didn’t miss the next glimpse of Linda Warren. She was a strong runner, and she moved faster than the two women could paddle a kayak. Every time May thought Linda must be exhausted by now and ready to collapse and rest, either she or Rose would catch a flash of white skin or the blue bathing suit between two trees above the shore, always lasting only long enough for the mind to verify what the eye had seen, and then gone again. Each time, the sight was farther away.

Rose said, “I think she’s still building her lead on us.”

“It can’t go on much longer,” May said. “We hiked all morning and then paddled, and now she’s been running for at least a mile. She’s got to stop.”

“I know. And we’re still just sitting and paddling and getting less tired. This time when we catch up, she’s going to be too weak to fight.”

“If you hadn’t—”

“Stop! I’d advise you to shut up,” Rose said. “If you want to play that, I can go on with it just as well as you can. If you had been so great it wouldn’t matter what I did. You’d have killed her without me.”

“Look!” May said. “Did you see her that time?”

“No.”

“She’s still running. I think we’ve got to head over that way and cut her off before she reaches the curve. If she keeps going straight from there, she could reach the interstate and flag somebody down. Then we’ll be the ones who are in trouble.”

Linda was keeping herself moving by walking twenty steps to catch her breath and then running forty, walking twenty, running forty. She had not formed a clear enough plan to stick to yet. Getting to shore and running had kept her alive so far. She was well ahead of the two women, but at some point, she was going to have to make a decision. Nothing in her life had prepared her for anything like this—except keeping fit, maybe—but now she had to choose. She began to climb higher up the hill to get deeper into the woods. And then she turned to cut back toward the house.

As she moved along under the trees, other parts of her plan began to form and add themselves to it. She had no key to the house, but there were rocks around it, some the size of a fist, and a few as big as a brick. She would break a window, get inside, find her phone, and call 911. Then she would do a quick search for weapons, checking now and then to see where the yellow kayaks were on the lake. If Paul didn’t own a firearm or it was locked up, she could at least take a kitchen knife or two. She could stuff a few necessities into her bag and head into the woods again, this time along the road to the interstate highway. The police would have to come from that direction, and maybe she could meet them on the way.

Charlie and Vesper walked along the lake quickly, always aware of the positions of the kayaks. They had still not thought of a satisfactory reason why they could only see two. Could one of the women have come ashore and walked back to the house? No. They would have met her on their way. And where was the kayak? Had it sunk? That didn’t strike either of them as possible. Didn’t they have buoyancy built in? Neither wanted to ask these questions aloud.

Then, as they reached a spot where the shore curved to reveal a large patch of reeds, they saw a straight line through it where the reeds had been pushed apart. At the end of the line was a yellow kayak. Charlie and Vesper ran to it. The kayak’s bow was up against the bank, as though someone had plowed through the reeds until it hit the shore.

Charlie stopped and knelt to look at it closely, leaning forward to stare at the stern section without touching anything. It was what he thought he had seen. The discoloration was a smattering of drops, most of them extending down the sides into streaks. “Blood,” he said. “Somebody is hurt.” He looked down into the hollow where the occupant had been. “More blood inside it.” There was also a deep mark just behind the seat on the outside, as though something had hit it.

“Oh my God,” Vesper said. “Maybe the other two are taking the hurt one across the lake to get her help.”

“I hope so. I’m going to call nine-one-one.”

“I think we have to,” she said.

He dialed his phone and heard about ten rings before he heard “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“I’m on the west shore of Blucher Lake, and we’ve just found a kayak left where the old road passes beside a patch of reeds. It’s got what I’m pretty sure is blood on it and in it. Earlier we saw three identical yellow kayaks on the lake. The other two are still out there, paddling away from here. We need police and an ambulance.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Charles Warren. I’m a lawyer from Los Angeles, and my girlfriend and I were going to surprise my mother, who is vacationing here with two other women.”

“Please stay on the line for a moment while I dispatch the emergency people.”

“I will.”

A moment later the operator returned. “You said Blooker Lake, sir?”

“Yes. B, L, U, C, H, E, R. You head north from Reno along the interstate about twenty-eight miles and there’s a Blucher Lake Road on the right. It leads only to Blucher Lake,” Warren said. “If you have a cell phone number, I can send you a map showing the location of the house.”

“Nope. I’ve got it. One more moment.”

Warren waited. About thirty seconds later the operator returned. “Mr. Warren? Are you still there?”

“We’re still here.”

“The emergency crew are on their way. I’m afraid it will take at least half an hour for them to reach you. Can you stay and show them what you’ve found?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can hang up. I’ll give you a call when they reach the lake.”

“Okay. Thank you.” Warren hung up. He said to Vesper, “I think the thing to do now is probably go back toward the house, so we’re sure the emergency people don’t go the wrong way or something.”

“Hello, Peter?”

“Hello, May.” Peter’s voice was distinctly weary and annoyed. “What is it now?”

“It’s a mess, Peter. The State of California is wiring her Danny’s money, probably today, but maybe yesterday. We needed to put her down so we could drain her bank accounts. We went out to the middle of the lake in the kayaks. When Rose went to split her head with a hatchet, she missed, believe it or not. I smacked her in the back of the head with my paddle so Rose would get another chance. This woman didn’t react like normal people do, Peter. She doesn’t get paralyzed and stupid. She starts paddling like she’s the kayak champion of the world. She heads toward shore, and we can’t keep up. She plows right through a bunch of weeds, gets out, and takes off like a goddamned gazelle.”

Peter said, “Honey, this would be a really good time for you to go take that shower. I’ve got to finish this call.”

“You have a woman with you right now?” May said. “Jesus, Peter, it’s not even five o’clock.”

“I’m living in a hotel in Nevada right now because you needed a favor. What am I supposed to do all day, gamble?”

“Rose and I need you, Peter. We’re in kayaks on the lake. Linda Warren is out in the woods, and she’s running. If she makes it to the highway, hell, if she runs into somebody with a phone, we’re all cooked. I don’t mean just us, either. She’s met you, and she’s slept in your house.”

Peter took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He ended the call. He spent a few seconds thinking about what he had just heard. His sisters had not only gotten him involved in this stupid attempt to get brother Danny’s money after seventeen years. They had brought the woman they were going to rob to his house, ignoring his reluctance and stretching the bonds of blood relations beyond any reasonable limits. Now they had tried to murder her. He rubbed his eyes as he sat on the bed getting more and more furious at them.

Peter had never tried to murder anyone. At first it had been because of stories like this. Murdering somebody without getting caught was very complicated, and required incredible attention to detail. As he had gotten older and smarter it had been because he just didn’t care enough about money to do it. Now he knew there was a strong chance he was going to be one of three people charged with attempted murder and convicted. He considered just not showing up. As he got angrier, he even considered going to the police and telling them what was going on. After a moment he abandoned that idea. May and Rose together could certainly get the police to believe that Peter was the guilty one. He heard the shower turn off and the hiss of water stop. He went to the closet and began to get dressed. As he was buttoning his shirt, he heard the door open behind him.

He turned and saw Trisha standing in the doorway of the bathroom with a big towel wrapped around her. She said, “You’re getting dressed? Where are we going?”

“I’m afraid it’s something I’ve got to do alone, honey. I should be back by morning. I can pay you now, if you want, and you can go, or if you’d rather just watch TV and get a good night’s sleep, you can order dinner from room service. Just don’t bring any other men to the room. That would piss me off and cost you a great deal of future income.”

“I would never do that,” she said. “That’s so sleazy.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said. “I don’t want to be offensive.” He reached into the closet one more time and took a dark gray sport coat off the hanger.

Trisha stepped close to him and hugged him, at the same time letting go of the towel. As the towel slid to the floor at her feet she whispered in his ear, “Oops,” and kissed him. As he pulled away, she didn’t move or pick up the towel. “I’ll be here.”

“I hope so.” He turned and went to the door. As he walked out the door and down the hallway, he thought about how much he resented the living members of his family. Then he thought about the nonliving members and noted that he hated them even more. He got to his car and pulled away from the hotel. He didn’t stop until he could turn into a dark alley, open the trunk of his car, and retrieve his gun from inside the wheel well under the spare tire. Then he got back into the car and drove. He knew the best route and every curve or bump in the road. The place he was going was his own home.

Rose and May were nearly to the eastern shore of the lake. They’d been paddling the kayaks for most of the afternoon, and their shoulders, backs, and even the muscles of their legs were sending pain messages to their brains each time they took another stroke.

Rose said, “It’s getting to be a pretty long time since we last saw her.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” May said. “I think she probably just ran as far as she could into the woods and then collapsed from exhaustion or hurt herself. I’ll bet she’s not more than a hundred yards from us right now, probably with a twisted ankle or a knee injury.”

“I think so too,” Rose said. “I think we should land at the last place we saw her, drag the kayaks up into the brush, and go in after her. Once you’re in among the tall trees, the branches start higher up, and you can see between the trunks.”

“Let’s do it. We can take care of this, and then Peter can drive up the road along this side of the lake, put the body in the trunk of his car, and get rid of it.”

They paddled along the shore to the spot where Rose had last seen Linda, beached the kayaks, and then dragged them up between the trees and left them uphill from a large rock. They walked to the east into the forest searching for any place where the deep layer of pine needles had been run through and displaced. They had only gone a few hundred feet before May said, “Today has been quite a workout. First the hike, then the paddling, and now this, whatever this is.”

Rose said, “This is finishing her off. You gave her a pretty good whack with the paddle. You might have given her a concussion. By now, she could be unconscious. But let’s be quiet so she doesn’t hear us coming.”

“Excuse me for mentioning it, but I’m very tired, and my whole body is beginning to hurt.”

Rose said, “I guess you’ve just gotten too old for this. I hope Danny stashed so much money that your share will be enough to keep you from having to do things like this anymore.”

May picked up the pace, stomping through the woods above the lake so she could get ahead of Rose and stay ahead.

They kept climbing the incline. They both knew that Linda’s best bet was to make it out to the interstate and get picked up by a driver, and the most direct route was straight through the forest from the northern end of the lake, where they’d seen her running. But it was only a few minutes before Rose stopped on the hill, gazed back across the lake from their higher altitude and called, “Look!” May looked and saw what she was pointing at. They could see the distant figure of Linda Warren running south along the crest of the hill toward their brother Peter’s house.

The two sisters moved quickly. They took a diagonal route down the hill to the trail that was the remnant of the road around the lake and raised their speed to a run. Rose gripped the hatchet handle just below the head, and May pressed her right hand against the sheath of the hunting knife so it wouldn’t flap against her as she ran.

Charlie Warren didn’t see his mother running at first. He heard her. She passed a hundred feet above Charlie and Vesper in the deep silence of the late afternoon, straining to keep going. He heard her heavy breathing first, the gasps to bring in enough air, and the huffs to exhale it. Then he heard her steps, the running shoes landing flat on the rocky surface above the road.

He and Vesper stepped out to the edge of the lake so they could see the top of the hill, and there she was. “Mom!” he yelled. “Linda Warren!” He gave a loud whistle, and saw her turn her head, but at first she didn’t stop. Her legs kept moving for four steps, as though they had acquired an independent will that had to be overcome. She stopped and looked down, then bent over for three seconds, trying to catch her breath, and then began to make her way down the hill toward Charlie and Vesper, who were climbing toward her.

When they met, she hugged them both at once. “They’re chasing me,” she rasped. “They’re trying to kill me.”

Charlie realized that the urgent thing was not to talk. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a car.”

He and Vesper each took one of Linda’s arms over their shoulders and half carried her toward the spot on the road where they had left the car. As she recovered her breath she said, “I don’t know why. They just changed instantly and went after me out on the lake.”

“It’s over now,” Charlie said. “That’s all that matters. We’ll get you out of here.”

Linda half turned her head and her eyes widened. “They’re coming.” The two women were on the road, running to catch up with them. Charlie handed Vesper the keys and said, “Keep going. Head for the car.”

Vesper looked reluctant, but she took Linda’s arm and tugged. “He’s right. Come on.” They began to trot to make it to the car, and Charlie turned to face the two sisters who were approaching at a run.

He stood where he was as they drew closer, but then he identified what the two women had in their hands. One was carrying a hatchet and the other a knife with a blade about six inches long. As they slowed their run to a trot, and finally, to a walk about thirty feet from him, they separated, so that they were advancing on both sides of him. The hatchet and the knife were no longer in sight. Their hands were now visible, so the weapons must have been tucked into their clothes. Was he imagining it, or were they both smiling?

No, he decided. They weren’t smiles, exactly. They were expressions of eagerness. He called out, “Hello. I’d like it if you’d stop where you are, so we can talk. Why are you chasing this other lady?”

Neither of them spoke. They just kept coming, their eyes turning to exchange a look now and then. He realized the strategy was that one would sprint forward to force him to head her off. When he did, she would attack, or at least engage him, while the other would dash at him from behind and stab or hack him. He said, “You can choose to back away. I won’t chase you if you do.”

They kept walking. They had a flexible strategy, almost certain to keep him off-balance while both attacked him at once from different sides. If they wanted to kill his mother—and Vesper—they would have to kill him first, and they knew it. He wondered how long it would be before the police arrived, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off them to look at his watch.

He squatted on the shore and picked up two water-smoothed oblong stones that fit the palms of his hands.

The two women reached positions on either side of him, each only about ten feet away. They both charged at once. He hurled the stone in his right hand first because he could simply pivot and throw. His target was the woman who ran at him holding the hatchet high.

The stone thudded against her just at the bottom of her rib cage. He extended his turn, passing the second stone from his left hand to his right and stepping to the side. The other woman was so close by then that he could hardly miss her. She slashed at him with her knife as he released the stone. It hit her shoulder and she cried out, clutching the spot.

He grabbed the arm and twisted it behind her so she dropped the knife. Then he pushed her away from him so he could pick it up, and kept moving to snatch up the hatchet that lay near the woman, who was lying with her arms hugging her ribs. He said, “Just stay where you are. There’s nothing to gain by doing anything now.”

He stayed close by, watching them. In another five minutes he heard his rental car’s springs creaking as Vesper drove it along the rough road. When she reached the spot above the beach, she stopped. He could see his mother in the passenger seat, staring back at him. A moment later he thought he heard the same sound continuing, but the rental car hadn’t moved. He looked across the lower end of the lake and saw that a police car and an ambulance were coming to a stop beside the house, and then a second police car pulled up behind the ambulance.

Warren felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He took out the phone and heard the emergency operator say, “Mr. Warren? The police and ambulance should be arriving. Do you see them?”

“Yes I do,” he said. “They’re here. Tell them to come ahead.”

A few minutes later, Peter Rickenger was driving along Blucher Lake Road. He reached the spot where he got his first view of the lake, backed up about twenty feet, and got out of his car. He walked close to the edge of the woods, stopped behind the thick trunk of an old pine, and looked across the lake. There were two police cars, one of them parked in the road near his house and the other on the stretch of road on the west side of the lake. There was an ambulance on the road behind it, and the back door was wide open. There was also another car, smaller and white. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that car. Usually white vehicles belonged to coroners, not the police, but this one was too small and it didn’t seem likely that the coroner could be here so soon, even if his sisters had already killed Linda Warren and reported it. Either way, it didn’t change what he had to do now.

Peter walked back to his car, got in and half closed his door very softly so the sound wouldn’t carry, and then backed up to a spot that was wide enough for him to turn around. He drove out to the interstate and headed back toward Reno. Along the way he removed the battery and SIM card from his phone, and stopped to throw the phone out as far as he could into one of the lakes. Some of these lakes were so deep that he felt sure the phone would never be found. As he thought about it, he began to feel pleased. He could buy the newest iPhone tomorrow while he was in Reno. He wouldn’t rush back to his home on the lake. He would wait a few days to get the call from May or Rose to let him know what had actually happened. Either his sisters had succeeded or they hadn’t. At this point he didn’t care very much which it was. They certainly hadn’t cared much about him.

It was another half hour before he arrived at his hotel. When he had parked his car and taken the elevator upstairs, he was pleased that when he tried his key card on the lock of his room the green light went on but the door wouldn’t open. After a few seconds he saw the little peephole in the door darken, and then Trisha disengaged the dead bolt and opened the door. She was wearing one of the two big fluffy white bathrobes.

She kissed him. “I’m glad you made it back so soon,” she said.

“Me too.”