Free Blood Will Have Blood by Linda Barnes Page A

noise upstairs continued, a regular metallic banging coming from over the wood shop. Spraggue reviewed the plan of the theater in his head. The stage was over the shop. Heavy metallic thuds. Just the sort of noise Karen had made as she added and subtracted the bricklike counterweights from the carriage.
    Spraggue doubled his pace. If someone were playing with the weights, he’d have to catch him in the act. He’d have to find out which of the heavy iron pipes looming over the stage was dangerously underbalanced. Have to find out before any of the actors worked onstage again.
    Double doors to the stage straight ahead. Spraggue’s hand touched the light switch, darkened the hall. He twisted the knob silently and pushed open the right-hand door.
    He could see nothing at first, the blackness was so profound. The clanging continued. The briefly opened door had gone unnoticed.
    Spraggue stood in the stage-left wings, fifty feet away from the counterweight system at stage right. Fifty feet of black silence crammed with cables, steps, platforms, miscellaneous noise traps. He pressed against the back wall of the stage, started moving—cautiously, silently—toward stage right, testing the path with a stockinged foot before each step. He hardly breathed.
    He was twenty feet away, when it happened. His feet came to a boundary, a barrier. It felt like a pile of lights, different sizes and shapes. He couldn’t stretch across it, couldn’t find the inches of bare floor to stand on. If he moved against them, the lights would roll, careen into one another. The joker would flee.
    Spraggue tensed. Only twenty feet away, the noise from the counterweights was still rhythmic. He lowered himself to his knees, hands scrabbling on the floor for the proper utensil. His outstretched right arm touched a C-clamp. It would have to do.
    He feinted once, then tossed the C-clamp center stage. As soon as it hit, hard and loud, Spraggue turned the flash light beam full on the stage-right wings. He faced the joker.
    For the first motionless seconds, Spraggue thought he must be hallucinating. A nightmare apparition stood before him. A vampire: caped, gloved, hooded in black. No face, no features, only darkness. The figure shrank from the light, as if the flash-beam were some holy relic. The shape moved. Only then did Spraggue see the startled eyes.
    The figure darted for the rightmost edge of the grand drape. Spraggue went after it, clambering over platforms and steps—
    Afterward, he remembered the sounds very clearly. The click that must have been the rope clamp giving way, the whine of rushing ropes, the tremendous clang as the iron suspension batten, suddenly unweighted, hit the gridiron, snapped the cable, and fell. Cold air rushed by his face; the stage floor shook beneath him. He reached up, slightly ahead, and felt the thick iron bar resting at an angle, not fifteen inches from his head.
    The sudden silence was piercing. Then gray dust, untouched for almost half a century, filtered down from the fly gallery and settled over the stage like choking dirty snow.

Chapter Ten
    Something wet trickled down Spraggue’s forehead. As he lifted a shaking hand to explore, all the stage lights flared at once. Then Karen screamed.
    â€œLie still,” she said quickly. “I’ll call an ambulance. It won’t take long—”
    Spraggue scrambled to his feet. “I don’t need one,” he said.
    She caught his wrist in a steel grip. “Lie down!” Her voice gritted through clenched teeth.” The police, then. Whatever you want. Just lie down. If you could see yourself.…”
    Spraggue stared down at his hand. His fingers were sticky where he had touched his forehead—and in the sudden glaring light, distinctly red. He raised the hand to his nose and sniffed.
    â€œPlease lie down.” Karen’s voice was nurse-to-hysterical-patient firm.
    â€œI’m not hurt,