moved, and a face appeared.
Caught in the strange light of the sun, he saw Beth, her features twisted into a mask of anguished grief. Blood smeared her face, and her hands seemed to be clawing spasmodically at the air.
Phillip felt his stomach tighten for a moment, and fought against the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm him.
Then he felt a movement at his side, and heard another voice.
“What is it?” Tracy asked. “What’s happening in there?”
Almost against his will, Phillip looked down. Tracy, her eyes glinting with malicious curiosity, looked back at him. “She killed someone, didn’t she?” he heard his daughter saying. But there was no fear in Tracy’s voice, nor so much as a hint of compassion or pity.
Only eagerness, and a strange note of satisfaction.
Clamping his hand on Tracy’s wrist, Phillip jerked the child away from the door.
“Stop it!” Tracy screeched as Phillip dragged her down the steps. “You’re hurting me!”
Phillip shoved Tracy into the back seat, slammed the door, then spoke through her open window. “Don’t say anything, Tracy,” he commanded. “If you say one word, I swear that the next time I see you I will give you a thrashing you will never forget!”
Then, at the look of anguish in Carolyn’s eyes, he shook his head. “It looks bad,” he said quietly. “Just get them home. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Then, as Carolyn put the car in gear and drove away, he dashed around the corner of the building and started toward the side door.
Phillip recognized Alan’s car parked next to the construction shack, and had an instinctive feeling of relief. Whatever had happened, Alan would already be taking care of it.
Then he was at the door, and even before his eyes had fully taken in what he was seeing, he recognized the body that lay broken on the floor.
He rushed into the area beneath the dome, and dropped to his knees, his arms instinctively going around Beth, trying to draw her away.
She fought him for a moment, clutching at her father’s body, but then let go, burying her face against Phillip’s chest, her arms encircling his neck, her hysterical screams dissolving into a series of racking sobs that shook her entire body.
Phillip reached out and laid his fingers on Alan’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
As he had expected, there was none.
His breath caught, and he rose to his feet, staggering back a step. Beth still clung to him, and he made no attempt to set her down, or try to get her to stand on her own legs. Instead, he hoisted her higher, his right arm supporting her while he caressed her gently with his left hand.
“It’s all right,” he whispered as he turned away and started back toward the door. “I’m here, and it’s going to be all right.”
In the shack, he picked up the phone and quickly dialed the number of the police station.
“There’s been an accident,” he said as soon as the phone was answered at the other end. “This is Phillip Sturgess. I’m at the mill, and we’ve had a terrible accident. Get some men and an ambulance down here right away.” Without waiting for an answer, he hung up the phone, then stepped out of the shack and sank to a sitting position on its steps.
In his arms, Beth continued sobbing, and for a moment that was all he could hear in the quiet of the afternoon.
Then, in the distance, he heard a siren begin wailing, then another, and another.
In less than a minute the sirens had reached a crescendo, then cut off abruptly as brakes squealed and dust rose up around him.
As if from nowhere, two police cars and an ambulance had appeared, and people seemed to be everywhere.
Two men in uniform, followed by a pair of white-clad paramedics, dashed past him, disappearing immediately into the cavernous interior of the mill.
Then there was someone beside him, and he looked up to see Norm Adcock’s craggy face gazing down at him.
“It’s Alan,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what happened to him. I—” He fell silent, unsure what else to say.
In his arms, Beth stirred, her sobbing having finally subsided a little. Then he felt her arms tighten around him once more, and heard her speak, her voice distorted, barely audible as it passed through a throat worn raw from her screams of a few moments ago. But still, the words themselves were clear.
“I killed him,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—really I didn’t.”
Then, as