Dead over heels - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,68

throw up.

I’d done it. I’d stabbed a man I knew. And there he stood, not falling, not defeated. I did as he said, though my legs were trembling so much I didn’t think I’d make it.

The knife, so much heavier at the handle than the blade, slid out of the wound and fell to the ground. I made a horrible noise, but not as horrible as the sound of that knife meeting the dirt.

For the first time I met Martin’s eyes. His face was unreadable. He might have been made of stone.

Paul’s face was more open. He’d been pouring himself out to Martin, and he hadn’t closed the emotional doors yet. He was anguished when he saw his attacker was me.

“Oh, Aurora, how could you do this?” he said wonderingly.

I was so shaken, I found myself on the verge of apologizing.

“You have to spare Martin,” I said to him, willing him to be swallowed up in my intensity.

“Look over there, Aurora,” Paul said gently. “See the bed of flowers I’ve got for you?”

The “bed of flowers” was the funeral arrangements spread neatly on the freshly turned dirt.

“I’ll kill him and we’ll share the bed of flowers. You deserve something that beautiful, that fragile. You’re so beautiful and fragile yourself.”

I shook my head hopelessly, not knowing what to say. Paul was crazy, but not so crazy he couldn’t function in his job. I didn’t think I could deceive him, since a large part of his work lay in detecting deception.

“Paul, I am willing to go with you if you’ll let Martin go,” I said. The seepage of blood had slowed, but not stopped. I felt as if a dog had ripped me up and left pieces of me all over the clipped green grass. I felt the tears beginning to flow. I might not be able to save my husband or myself. I had one more chance.

I held out my arms to Paul Allison and I stepped a little closer. “Paul, listen, you’re—I’m so sorry,” and I began to cry in earnest, but I didn’t cover my face, didn’t let my arms drop.

“You have to stay where you are, honey,” said Paul. His voice was faltering. “Please don’t cry.”

“No,” I said, and kept on moving slowly, inch by inch, until I wrapped my arms around Paul, holding his to his sides. I laid my head against his chest; how strange it felt to be holding someone built differently from Martin; taller, thinner, less muscled. I could feel Paul’s heart beating beneath my cheek. I had sunk a knife into this man’s body. His blood was staining my left arm and hand.

And I felt his extended forearm fall to his side, the arm holding the gun. I heard the thud as the gun fell to the grass. I felt both his arms circling me, pulling me closer to him for the first and last time.

He buried his face in my hair.

“Sweet,” he said, and then Martin clipped him in the head with the gun butt.

We had a hard time getting ourselves believed, even after Lynn told the other cops that Paul, his heart overflowing under the emotional pressure of the funeral, had confided in her that day, following Jack’s interment, that he was “deeply involved” with me. He also told her some of the same points he’d raised against Martin; that Martin was an absentee husband, that Martin permitted slander against my name.

To say the least, Lynn was highly skeptical and dubious about all Paul’s fantasies. And she knew me well enough to know that’s just what they were.

But she wasn’t happy to testify against a fellow officer. No one on the police force was delighted to be told that one of their number had murdered another officer, one female civilian, and attacked a male officer and a male civilian.

And Paul popped back into a more rational frame of mind to deny everything except that he had a real crush on me, not exactly an unknown situation. He said that Martin and I had attacked him unprovoked, that I’d misunderstood certain things he’d told me, and that Martin had then pulled Paul’s gun from Paul’s holster and hit him with it.

That was not exactly a sturdy defense, no matter how much the police wanted to believe one of their own. And there were stains matching Arthur’s blood between the seat cushions of Paul’s car. And there was a matching stain left on the handle, a stain not washed off by Paul’s own