EXECUTION IN E Page 20

  “This isn’t justice,” she said. “It’s murder. Common murder.”

  “Not murder.” Malcolm raised the monolight above his head. The bright beam hit the water, illuminating it as if lightening had flashed. Agnes’s jaw quivered as she tried to scream behind her gag. Tears streamed, rippling the surface of the font’s water where they dripped from her chin. “Justice.” Malcolm drew his arm back.

  “Retribution!” Gethsemane shouted. “Cheap, tawdry, two-bit revenge. Straight out of a bad movie.”

  Mal remained still. Agnes tried to scream again.

  Gethsemane stepped forward. “Being a shite girlfriend is heartbreaking. It is not a crime. And, even if it was, it wouldn’t warrant the death penalty.”

  “And Jared? Did he deserve a death sentence?” Malcolm lowered the light as he spoke. As the beam arced toward the floor, it flashed over Frankie. The math teacher crept up behind Malcolm.

  Gethsemane kept talking. “Jared’s death was an accident.”

  “An accident? Is that what they call driving under the influence where you come from? Everyone in that car was blind drunk. Lismore had as much business behind the wheel as a duck has wearing a wig. But that didn’t stop ol’ Ty, did it? He got drunk, got in the driver’s seat, and drove into a bayou. He saved himself and left Jared to drown. Not even brave enough to admit what he’d done. Instead, the coward put the blame on poor, dead Jared, the man he killed. That’s no accident.”

  “Granted, it probably qualifies as vehicular homicide. On Ty’s part, not Agnes’s. She’s an accessory, at best. Turn her over to the authorities and let them dispense real justice.”

  “Hah!” Malcolm sneered. “Dispense justice? You mean let them do nothing. Let them tell Jared’s mother that it’s been too long to prosecute anyone for the death of her only son. Let them tell his father that there’s not enough evidence, that their case load’s too heavy. Let them tell Jared’s family that Jared isn’t important enough to be bothered with.” He raised the light.

  Gethsemane threw up her hands. “No, don’t!”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “B-because,” she stammered as she tried to think of a reason. Any reason. She forced herself to ignore Frankie as, behind Malcolm, he picked up a brass candlestick. Stall, stall, stall. “Because the one thing I can’t figure out is how you figured out what happened that night. Sure, you knew Agnes’s name but not the others’. Maybe sussing out who her friends were after you met her wasn’t difficult, but they weren’t talking. They’d all agreed to keep mum about that night. How’d you know? Some kind of occult trick? Did Cousin Rosalie read the answer in the tarot cards?”

  Malcolm’s mocking laugh angered more than frightened her. “Now who sounds like a bad movie? You’ve been spending too much time with the spooks, m’dear. My method of deduction was quite mundane. Taking photos of Sunny meant taking photos of Ty and their friends, or hangers-on, or entourage, or whatever you want to call them. All part of the social media strategy of curating their image. Not that they minded being photographed. Except for Theophilus, they were as vain as the happy couple. You’d be surprised at how open people are with the man behind the camera. Maybe not as open as they are with their hairdressers and bartenders, but I bet they tell me more than they tell their priest. Isn’t that right, Father?” he called to Tim.

  “Please, I beg you,” Tim said, “stop this madness. Let Agnes go.”

  Gethsemane sensed Malcolm’s mood shift. She redirected him. “Tell us the rest.”

  “Pact or no, people have a hard time keeping secrets, especially when they’re guilty ones. Sharing our burdens is human nature. I’d hoped to get Agnes talking, but she turned out to have more of a backbone than I’d anticipated. I’d admire her if I didn’t hate her. Brian Nishi turned out to be the weak link. He gossips. Excuse me, gossiped, past tense. Dead men tell no tales. Drunk men, however, do. Brian and I bonded over tattoo art and I plied him with liquor. He let enough details slip for me to piece together his involvement and get a pretty good idea of that of the others. But it wasn’t until I’d seduced him that he let the whole story out.”

  “Seduced?” Surprised crept into her voice. “But I thought—I mean, what about Vivian?”

  “You’re shocked,” Mal said. “How charmingly conventional. Sunny and Ty’s crew is a broad-minded bunch. And the damned’s gotta do what the damned’s gotta do. I scored a bit of luck there. Turns out Brian talked in his sleep. He suffered from full-blown somniloquy—monologues, dialogs, the gamut. I don’t know what position the National Sleep Foundation takes, but I’m convinced his vow of secrecy about Jared’s death triggered his sleep-talking disorder. The strain of covering up a murder during the day led him to talk about it at night. And I lay beside him, taking it all in. He didn’t realize he talked in his sleep. Even if he had, I’d no fear he’d admit to the others that he’d blabbed.”

  “You never let on that you and Brian had a relationship.”

  “It ended before we turned up in Dunmullach. Brian had a serious girlfriend who was not broad-minded enough to tolerate being cheated on and I had my own reasons for not wanting to go public, so we kept things hush-hush. Besides, it wasn’t a relationship. It was a fling that I ended once it had served its purpose.”

  “Your purpose being to find more names to add to your hit list.”

  “I’d already planned a send-off for Agnes. I blame her for Jared’s death more than anyone, even Ty. If he’d never met her…” Malcolm closed his eyes for a second.

  Frankie raised the candlestick, started to swing—

  Malcolm opened his eyes and shifted his weight, moving out of Frankie’s target zone. Frankie pulled back. Gethsemane held her breath and locked her gaze on Malcolm.

  Malcolm continued. “If Jared had never met Agnes, he’d be with me still. Agnes was always going to die. But I knew she hadn’t acted alone. Why should she die alone? Once I got the full story from Brian, I decided that since Agnes, Ty, Brian, Theo, and Verna had all hung together, they should all hang together. Metaphorically speaking. Ty’s the only one who actually hanged.”

  Realization dawned. “Coming to Dunmullach for this pre-wedding photoshoot was actually your idea, wasn’t it? So you could get at Verna. Ty talked Sunny into coming with some nonsense about the scenery complementing her hair, but you talked Ty into it, didn’t you?”

  Mal winked. “You’re really getting the hang of this detective stuff. Not that I had to twist Ty’s arm. I’m not the only one who wanted to get at Verna.”

  “Your hook up with Vivian. Also part of your plot against Verna?”

  “Mostly. Say ninety percent? Ten percent was just for me. Vivian’s…enthusiasm…is alluring. Initially, I envisioned using one Cunningham sister to target the other. But once I discovered how unguarded Vivian was around her ADHD meds…”

  “You stole dextroamphetamine capsules from Vivian to put in Ty’s booze.” Gethsemane tried not to look at Frankie, arms raised, candlestick ready, behind Mal. He shook and sweat beaded his forehead despite the cool of the basement.

  “Seemed fitting. Her sister protected the man who stole my cousin’s life. Next you’ll want to know how I slipped them to Ty. Since we’ve got to get this show going, I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Vivian handed the flask to me after her spitball stunt and asked me to return it to Ty. She’ll be disappointed to learn that I dumped the flask and refilled it with fresh stock. I don’t know how spit alters the taste of whiskey and I needed Ty to drink the stuff.” Mal shifted position again. Frankie aborted his blow.

  Did she imagine a gleam in Mal’s eye? Did he know Frankie was behind him? Was he messing with them? “Did you know how the dextroamphetamine would interact with the meds Ty was taking for his respiratory illness?”

  “No idea. But I knew they’d interact with the alcohol. I spiked it with enough speed to send Ty zooming to the moon. Then I swu
ng by the bar and gave him back his flask like the straight up guy I am.” Sarcasm ran so thick in Mal’s voice; Gethsemane marveled he didn’t choke on it. “Ty was in no hurry to get back to his blushing bride-to-be so I knew he planned to slip out and find a place to get drunk, someplace Sunny wouldn’t catch him. Ty’s a sloppy drunk and Sunny hates sloppy.”

  “Someplace isolated, where he could meet Verna without fear of Sunny catching him. Did Vivian tell you or did you guess?” She willed Frankie to hurry up and swing already.

  “I guessed. Ty was as predictable as he was cruel. He practically foamed at the mouth at the thought of getting back into Verna’s head.”

  “What if Ty had OD’d on that amphetamine-booze cocktail you served him?”

  Mal shrugged. “It would have been that much easier to get him over the railing.”

  “What if Verna shared Ty’s flask? Weren’t you afraid—”

  Malcolm waved the question away. His raised arm threw off Frankie’s aim. “That was a chance I was willing to take. I trusted that Verna Cunningham had enough hard-won sense not to indulge in mind- or mood-altering substances in the presence of Ty Lismore. I was right. She declined his offer of a drink as well as his advances.”

  “You were there?” There was a gleam in Ty’s eye. Gethsemane forced herself to keep her eyes on his face. Damn it, Frankie, screw mathematical precision—swing!

  “Of course. I wanted to see Lismore die. I waited until Verna left and Ty got drunk, then I climbed up to the walk and whispered terrifying things in the dark. With his mind turned to susceptible mush by that chemical stew he’d ingested, convincing him there was only one way to save himself was pathetically easy. He grabbed the noose from my hand.” Ty pantomimed a hanging. Frankie repositioned himself and took aim.

  Gethsemane fought to keep the anxiety out of her voice. She wanted to yell to Frankie, “Do it now!” Instead she asked Malcolm, “Why not kill Verna then and be done with both of them?”

  “You might as well ask Dame Christie why she didn’t put all of the murderers in And Then There Were None in a ferry and sink it, to be done with all of them at once. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Fun? You think this is fun? Killing people one by one—”

  “Don’t forget directing suspicion to the Cunningham sisters. I enjoyed that, too.”

  Nausea rose from the pit of Gethsemane’s stomach. “How can you call serial murder fun?”

  “Serial retribution. It was at least as much fun as Jared had, drowning alone, trapped in a slowly sinking truck, clawing at his seatbelt, pounding on windows, holding his breath until his lungs threatened to explode, understanding with his last moments of consciousness that people he trusted, the woman he loved, the person who put him in that water had saved themselves and left him behind to die. It was at least that much fun.

  A sickening thwack, the sound of metal on bone, echoed off the baptistry walls. For a full ten seconds, the room held its breath. The world froze.

  Then Malcolm turned, his slow movement an agony to watch. Frankie stood behind him, brass candlestick gripped like a major league batter swinging for a home run. Anger, annoyance, and hate played across Malcolm’s face. He smiled reminiscent of a vicious schoolboy the second before he swatted a harmless ladybug.

  “Pathetique” warned Gethsemane the second before it happened. She couldn’t yell his name fast enough. “Frankie!”

  Malcolm’s arm shot out and hit Frankie hard across the face. The math teacher flew backward and slammed into a stack of boxes. The uppermost box tipped and altar candles rained down on his head as blood rained down from his nose. The candlestick clattered to the floor and bounced into the piscina. Agnes tried to dodge away from it but the anchor kept her from moving more than a few inches.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Malcolm said.

  “Neither was hitting Frankie.” Gethsemane rushed to her downed friend. “I think you broke his nose.”

  “I might have killed him.” He watched as Father Tim searched through boxes. The priest uncovered a bundle of purificators and tore it open. He held one of the linen cloths against Frankie’s nose. Malcolm sighed. “I’ll be generous and mark this down to attempted self-defense. I won’t prosecute.”

  “Won’t prosecute?” Gethsemane scowled. “Who the hell appointed you D.A., judge, and jury?”

  Malcolm shrugged and pushed up his sleeve. He aimed his light at his tattooed devil’s handshake, the mark of his Faustian deal.

  “And why are you still standing?” she added with a shudder. “We all heard that candlestick make contact with your skull. They probably heard it all the way in Cork. You’re not even bleeding.”

  Father Tim replaced Frankie’s saturated purificator with a clean one.

  Malcolm touched his head where the blow landed then held up his hand and wiggled his bloodless fingers. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we who are damned to hell call an occult trick.”

  Rosalie leaned her head back against a wall. She spoke without looking at the others. “Some of those tattoos gracing my cousin’s arms are more than mere body art. They’re sigils used as protection spells, part of the deal my cousin made with the devil. He won’t die until he has his revenge. Agnes is still alive, therefore, so is my cousin. If you let him kill Agnes and then hit him…”

  Agnes squirmed and splashed and tried to get out of the pool.

  “Of course,” Rosalie leaned away from the wall, “we can’t let that happen.” She pulled a brass bishop’s crozier from the shadows. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Cousin Rosalie,” Malcolm tightened his grip on the monolight, “what are you doing?”

  Rosalie offered Gethsemane a rueful smile. “That tarot card reading I told you about, the one that predicted approaching death? The death it predicted—is mine.” She raised the crozier and jammed its end into an electrical socket. Sparks flew, then the baptistry went dark.

  “The lights!” Gethsemane reached out in the pitch black of the room. Her hand landed on Frankie’s head. He groaned.

  “Rosalie blew a fuse.” Father Tim’s voice sounded nearby.

  “Agnes?” Gethsemane called out. “Agnes, make some noise. Please.”

  Splashing sounded from the direction of the piscina.

  “Rosalie?” Gethsemane waited. “Rosalie, are you there?”

  Rosalie didn’t answer.

  Gethsemane hesitated. She lowered her voice. “Mal?”

  She jumped at a scrape and hiss near her ear. Father Tim’s face appeared in the light of an altar candle. He handed it to Gethsemane and lit another.

  She held hers aloft. Frankie lay next to her, blood-soaked purificator pressed against his nose. Father Tim knelt opposite. He also held his candle up and scanned the room.

  Shadow and light flickered across the piscina. Agnes struggled against the duct tape. Beyond her a form lay crumpled next to a bishop’s crozier.

  Tim blew Gethsemane’s candle out. “You don’t want to see that.”

  She faced the opposite direction and Tim re-lit her candle. “Where’s Mal?”

  “Gone.” Tim went to Agnes’s aid.

  Twenty-Eight

  Frankie waved the EMT away. “The bleeding’s stopped. I’m fine. I don’t want transport to hospital.” He shifted on the ambulance seat. “Could you make this thing any less comfortable?”

  The EMT stripped off her rubber gloves and threw them on the ambulance floor. “This is why I prefer unconscious patients.” She eyed Gethsemane with pity. “Let me know if he changes his mind.”

  “Frankie,” Gethsemane said, “your nose is broken. It’s going to heal crooked.”

  “A bump mid-nose adds character. Don’t fuss.”

  They fell silent as Scene of Crime gardaí wheeled a stretcher through the church yard for the second time that day. Gethsemane slipped an arm
around Frankie’s shoulders.

  Niall’s voice came from behind them. “Poor Rosalie. Her overloading the circuit killed power to the whole church, including Mal’s camera light. Saved Agnes from electrocution but at such a price. Any idea why she sacrificed herself? She and Agnes weren’t close.”

  “Rosalie had her demons,” Gethsemane said. “Literally, it seems. How’s Agnes?”

  “Being treated for shock but grateful to be alive.”

  “What happens to her now? Will you arrest her?

  “Arrest her for what?” Niall asked.

  “For covering up a murder, what else?”

  “I’m afraid, my sweet justice warrior—” He held up a hand to stop her protest. “I mean that sincerely. I’m afraid this may be one of those times when not all who have it coming, get what’s due them. Even if New Orleans wasn’t out of my jurisdiction, which it is, there may no longer be a crime with which to charge Agnes. Remember our earlier conversation, when you hesitated to tell me about Verna being in the car with the others for fear I’d arrest her? I did a bit of research on American law. You were right. Statutes of limitations may apply to concealing evidence of a murder and obstruction of justice. Since Agnes hardly qualifies as a most wanted criminal, I doubt there’d be much impetus to extradite her, even if the statutes haven’t expired.”

  “So, unless she returns to New Orleans on her own…”

  Niall slipped an arm around Gethsemane and hugged her. “I know a fella with the N.O.P.D. We met on an ITAC CEPOL CPD course in Dublin.”

  “A what in Dublin?”

  “A continuing professional education course focusing on law enforcement cooperation and information exchange at the Garda College. This fella and I keep in touch. I’ll give him a heads up on the situation.”

  “But I shouldn’t hold my breath. Unless Agnes turns herself in, she’ll end up like Yseult.”

  “A fugitive on the run from theft and fraud charges? Not exactly a pleasant outcome.”

  “Better than near electrocution. Agnes will have to live with the trauma of that experience. So I guess she’s not getting off with no punishment.”