Spiral

hand behind his left ear, bending his knees and widening his eyes in a parody of a Swiss yodeler. ”Listen.”
    I could hear the doppler sound of an approaching and then receding vehicle engine.
    Helides lowered his hand. ”And that’s from the state route, nearly a mile from where we are, as the proverbial crow flies. The reason I could hear you coming up the dirt road in your car. I must say, though, that you gave me a bit of a scare with your silence afoot.” Helides executed another dance step, this time a pirouette ending in a karatelike stance. ”Yes. John Cuddy, skulking along my path like some sort of ninja warrior.” Helides spun around, but didn’t kick or strike out at the air. Instead, he seemed to relax. ”God, it’s so good to act out.” He turned back to me, smiling. ”Faking chronic, clinical depression is terribly enervating.”
    I watch Helides cavort around the clearing, like a hyperactive child after a long drive. He skipped and hop-scotched, jumping front and back, then side to side.
    Suddenly Helides stopped, turning to me again. ”You figured it out, didn’t you?”
    I just stared at him.
    He said, ”Same deal as with Mr. Vega. No tape, no screams. Not for help, not even from the pain. Agreed?”
    I blinked.
    Helides came forward, bouncing, almost prancing, on the balls of his feet. He pulled the tape off my mouth slowly, clearly enjoying the sound of it, the feel of it.
    ”There now, John. Tell me, how did you deduce that I was no longer depressed?”
    ”I worked backward from the crime. The pool scene chosen very thoughtfully, so that forensics wouldn’t come up with much. Or with too much, given the number of people attending the party.”
    ”A quite wonderful Website for mystery writers helped me immensely there.”
    ”And Veronica had told you about Kalil Biggs wanting to do a video.”
    ”Yes,” said Helides. ”The perfect excuse for my father ordering Duy to turn off the internal security cameras.”
    ”Then the — ” I clamped my jaw shut, gritting my teeth against a surge of pain from my right buttock.
    ”Ah, exquisite, isn’t it? I would love to have had this kind of conversation with Malinda, too, but unfortunately my specialty is flora, not fauna.”
    Tightly, I said, ”And something got to her first.”
    ‘Turkey vultures. If it were daylight, you’d see them above, circling. After I took her on Wednesday night, and brought her here, I really had to get back to my father’s house, so there was no time to speak with her then. And besides, John, even I didn’t know how quickly the lava/sap would work, though I am glad to have had the foresight to use cable wire instead of rope. I think the sap could weaken even braided hemp to the breaking point.” Helides shook his head. ”But, I digress. Learning from Malinda—whose heart, I believe, must have simply given out from terror—I went back on the Internet, found that vultures are discouraged by movement of any sort in what they perceive to be carrion. So, I gave Mr. Vega a scarecrow of sorts, the flag of his country of origin.” He looked toward Justo’s tree. ”Waving it in a patriotic fashion will keep the vultures away.” Helides came back to me. ”For how long, though, should prove fascinating.”
    I tried to focus. ”I can understand how you killed Veronica, even why violating her would deflect suspicion away from you given the depression and the drugs you take. What I still don’t understand is why—”
    ”—I had to kill the little bitch in the first place?” Another surge, from my left forearm this time. ”Yes.”
    ”Quite simple, really. She found out.”
    ”About what?”
    Helides regarded me the way a teacher might when disappointed by an otherwise promising student. ”That I wasn’t really depressed, of course.”
    ”And you took her life for it?”
    ”Not immediately. I was actually quite naive. When I realized about fourteen months ago that I was seemingly, miraculously coming out of the years—decades, John—of genuine depression, I didn’t tell anyone. Not Dr. Forbes, certainly not my father. You see, I wasn’t sure if my ‘improvement’ was just another cruel joke the illness was playing on me. So, I conducted my own experiments, with my mind and body the laboratory. I slowly weaned myself off the drugs—still getting prescriptions filled, of course, even palming a few pills when someone else might be in the kitchen to see me ‘take’ them. I applied