The Shape of Night(79)

Just as mine will be.

He bends down and grasps my ankles. Begins to drag me toward the open door.

I flail, try to break free, but the pain shooting down my arm is so agonizing that I’m reduced to kicking. Despite it he holds on, hauling me toward the widow’s walk. This is how Jessie died. Now I know the terror Jessie felt as she struggled against him. As he lifted her up and over the railing. Did she hang on for a moment, her legs dangling over the abyss? Did she plead for her life?

    I keep kicking, screaming.

He pulls my legs through the doorway and I reach out with my good arm to grab the doorframe. He yanks harder on my ankles but I hang on for dear life. I won’t surrender. I will fight him till the end.

In fury he drops my ankles and brutally stamps his heel on my wrist. I feel bones snap and I shriek. My broken hand is useless and I cannot hold on.

He drags me out onto the widow’s walk.

Night has fallen. All I see of Ben is his shadowy outline, wreathed in mist. Here is how it ends, tossed from the rooftop. A fatal plummet to the ground.

He grabs me under my arms and wrenches me toward the railing. The mist is as wet as tears on my face. I taste salt, inhale a final breath that smells like…

The sea.

Through the swirling fog, I see the figure looming in the darkness. Not mere mist but something real and solid, advancing toward us.

Ben sees it too and he freezes, staring. “What the fuck?”

Abruptly he releases me and I slam down onto the deck. A jolt of pain shoots from my neck, and it’s so excruciating that for an instant everything goes dark. I don’t see the blow, but I hear the fist thudding into flesh and Ben’s grunt of pain. Then I make out the two shadows grappling in the fog, twisting and turning in a macabre dance of death. Suddenly they both lurch sideways, and I hear the crack of splintering wood.

And a shriek. Ben’s shriek. For the rest of my life, that sound will echo through my nightmares.

    A figure looms over me, broad-shouldered and cloaked in mist. “Thank you,” I whisper.

Just before everything fades to black.



* * *



—

I cannot move my head. A cervical brace encases my neck and shoulders as I lie flat on my back in the ambulance, and I can only stare straight up, where I see the reflection of flashing blue lights on my IV pole. Police radios chatter outside and I hear yet another vehicle arrive, tires crackling over gravel.

A light shines in my left eye, then my right.

“Pupils are still equal and reactive,” the paramedic says. “Ma’am, do you know what month it is?”

“September,” I murmur.

“What day?”

“Monday. I think.”

“Okay. Good.” He reaches up to adjust the bag of saline that’s hanging over my head. “You’re doing great. Let me just tape down that IV line more securely.”

“Did you see him?” I ask.

“See who?”

“Captain Brodie.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“When you came up to get me, he was there, on the widow’s walk. He saved my life.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. The only person I saw up there with you was Mr. Haskell. He’s the one who called the ambulance.”

“Ned was there?”

“He’s still right outside.” The paramedic sticks his head out the back of the ambulance and calls out: “Hey, Ned, she’s asking about you!”

A moment later, I see Ned’s face looking down at me. “How’re you feeling, Ava?”

    “You saw him, didn’t you?” I ask.

“She’s asking about someone named Brodie,” the paramedic explains. “Says he was up there on the widow’s walk.”

Ned shakes his head. “The only people I saw up there were you and Ben.”

“He tried to kill me,” I say softly.

“I wasn’t sure about him, Ava. All these years, I wondered how Jessie really died. And when Charlotte…”

“The police thought you killed her.”

“So did everyone else. When you got involved with Ben, I worried it was happening all over again.”

“That’s why you followed him here?”

“I heard you screaming up on the roof, and I knew. I think I always knew it was him. But no one listened to me, and why would they? He was the doctor and I’m just…”

“The man who tells the truth.” If my wrist wasn’t encased in bandages, if it didn’t hurt just to move, I would have grasped his hand. There’s so much I want to say to him, but the paramedics have already started the engine and now it’s time to leave.

Ned climbs out and swings the door shut.

I’m trapped, stiff as a mummy in my neck brace, so I can’t look out the rear window at the morgue van that’s waiting to transport the body of Ben Gordon. Nor can I catch a final glimpse of the house where I would have met my death, were it not for Ned Haskell.

Or was it the ghost who saved me?

As the ambulance bounces down the driveway, I close my eyes and once again I see Jeremiah Brodie standing on the widow’s walk, keeping watch as he always has.

As he always will.