I was getting ready to spring when I realized Donna was already on the move. Reaching up into the sleeve of my borrowed sweater, taking something out.
The small can of fixative spray.
She had her index finger on the nozzle, and as Phyllis turned back around, Donna pressed it.
Sixty-six
Donna raised the canister to within six inches of Phyllis’ startled face and let loose. The spray, which took my breath away when she sprayed it too close to me in the house, completely clouded Phyllis’ mouth and nose and eyes.
She screamed, then gasped for air.
The gun was coming up, but before she could aim it anywhere, I was on my feet, grabbing her right forearm with both hands and slamming it against the windowsill.
Phyllis held on to the gun. I slammed her wrist again, much harder this time, against the sill, and the gun clattered out of her hand. Donna was still spraying. It was like her hand had gone into spasm, was frozen into position.
Phyllis coughed and hacked and clawed at her face with both her hands. But once her fingers touched her cheeks, they became adhered to them, and she struggled to pull them away.
I went for Donna’s arm, steered it away from Phyllis’ face. “It’s okay,” I said. “Nice going.”
She threw the can to the floor and put her arms around my neck. “Oh God oh God.”
As much as I wanted to hold her, I broke free to get Phyllis’ gun before she dropped down and started patting around to find it. Something she might have been inclined to try the moment she got her hands unstuck from her face.
Phyllis was screeching.
Donna had moved to the window. “Cal,” she said. “Ricky’s coming.”
I bolted out the front door, grabbing my Glock from the table in the hall along the way. The moment I was outside I glanced up the street.
Even if he couldn’t make out exactly what he was seeing from where he was parked, Ricky must have noticed some commotion in the window as I struggled with his mother. Now he was out of the truck, coming our way, gun in hand.
The front door to the house that was closest to his truck flew open and Augie charged out.
“Haines!” he bellowed. “Haines!”
Ricky glanced back, saw Augie, but kept on going. “Freeze!” Augie shouted, but Ricky was not about to follow orders from his chief right now.
There was the sense that all hell was breaking loose.
Feeling exposed, I charged toward Phyllis’ car for cover. I dropped to the ground near the rear bumper, my knee just missing the puddle that I now had little doubt was blood.
I had a pretty good idea what — who — was in that trunk.
There was screaming coming from the front door of my house. I glanced that way, saw Phyllis Pearce stumble out. Her hands were free but her face was streaked with blood where her fingers had pulled away skin. Donna appeared in the doorway behind her, still holding the gun, but raising her arm in a gesture of futility, as if to say, “I couldn’t shoot her.”
Ricky was nearly to Phyllis’ car. Still on one knee, I raised my weapon over the trunk and yelled at him: “Stop!”
Ricky raised his gun and fired.
I dropped down behind the car. There was another shot. I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed it was Augie, trying to stop Ricky.
Haines ran past the end of the car, turned the gun in my direction, fired wildly, missing me. Then he stopped, pivoted, aimed the gun back at Augie. I raised my head, saw my brother-in-law running this way.
Raised the Glock, aimed for the center of Ricky’s body, and pulled the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
Ricky staggered back as though he’d been hit with an invisible sandbag. He dropped left, put out an arm to break his fall, but by the time his palm hit pavement it offered no resistance. He crumpled into a heap.
Augie was on him a second later, stomping on the hand that still clung to the gun. Haines didn’t move.
Phyllis ran past me, screaming, fell to her knees at her son’s side, threw her arms around him and began to weep. Augie bent over, pried the gun from Haines’ dead fingers, and started to walk toward me.
He had a sudden look of alarm on his face. He was looking past me.
I spun around.
Donna was standing ten feet away, looking down, her hand pressed to her stomach, where there was a growing dark blotch.
Donna eyes met mine as she said, “Something’s wrong, Cal. I think something’s wrong.”
Two weeks later
Sixty-seven
Phyllis Pearce lived, and the story came out. About how one night her son had cracked a chair across Harry Pearce’s back, then thrown him down the stairs. How they had covered up the crime, faked his death, and looked after him for seven years.
The rest we more or less knew.
Phyllis faced a raft of charges, including the unlawful confinement and murder of her husband, Harry Pearce. Even though she hadn’t actually strangled Hanna Rodomski, or shot Dennis Mullavey, she was charged as an accessory in those crimes, too.
Patchett’s was up for sale.
Augustus Perry submitted his resignation as Griffon’s chief of police, and Bert Sanders accepted it. Augie believed the actions of Officer Ricky Haines reflected so badly on his own leadership that he had no moral authority to continue leading the department. He was talking about moving to Florida with Beryl.
He wanted to put Griffon behind him as much as I did. We both carried a heavy burden from this place.
We were damaged men.
Haines wasn’t going to be facing a trial, of course. When they brought him into Emergency he had no vital signs. I think he may have been dead before he hit the pavement.
I’d never wanted to kill a man, but I was having a hard time working up any sense of remorse for what I’d done. First of all, I did it because Haines was firing at my brother-in-law.
So it was, as they say, justifiable.
But there was something else going through my head in the initial moments after I’d pulled the trigger twice.
This is for Scott.
What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t for another few seconds, was that it was for Donna, too.
It was that one wild round Haines got off when he ran past the end of the car. The bullet had ripped past me, past Phyllis Pearce, and found a home in Donna’s stomach.
I’d told her to stay in the house.
I’d told her.
Things had been looking so good, minutes earlier. I thought Phyllis had done something to Donna’s wrist, but she’d been holding it to keep the fixative from sliding out of the sleeve of my sweater.
Clever.
There have been some who’ve suggested, as horrible as it was, that maybe I should find some small comfort in the fact that Donna went quickly.
People say a lot of astonishingly stupid things when they’re trying to console you, and it can be hard to accept that they mean well. I suppose they think, in the overall scheme of things, in the course of a lifetime, that five minutes is quick.
It’s not.
Not when you are easing your wife gently down to the ground, rolling up your jacket to put under her head for a pillow, applying pressure to the wound, telling her that things are going to be okay, waiting to hear the siren of an approaching ambulance, wondering what’s taking it so long to get here, getting down on your knees and touching her hair and her face and telling her you love her and that she just has to hang in, that help is coming soon, putting your head close to her mouth so you can hear her whisper that she loves you, too, that she is scared, that she wants to know what it is you wanted to tell her, and you say you can’t wait to ride the cable cars, that as soon as she’s okay we’re going to go away, and she says that sounds nice, but she still doesn’t have anything to wear, and also doesn’t feel too good, and you tell her she’s going to be okay, that the ambulance is almost here even though you still don’t hear it, and she finds the strength to raise one hand and touch it to your cheek, and she says now it doesn’t even hurt that much, and that she’s not all that scared after all, that things really are going to be okay, and you tell her again to be quiet, to just hang in, and her hand comes away from your cheek and falls to her breast and her eyes go glassy and you finally hear the ambulance coming but it doesn’t matter anymore.