“Shut up,” he said. “Think you’re smart, but not smart enough to hide your fucking car.”
He had me there. He knew Mom’s Taurus from tailing me minutes earlier, and leaving it out front wasn’t the brightest thing I’d done today.
“Put the needle down,” Agnes told him. “You’re not hurting Don.”
I could see the fear in Dad’s eyes. He was frozen, scared to make any kind of fast move for fear that needle would be driven straight into him. We didn’t have to know what was in it. We knew Sturgess wasn’t giving out flu shots.
“We have to make a deal,” Sturgess said. “Everyone stays quiet, and I won’t kill him.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, it would have been laughable. “The police are already on their way,” I told him. “There aren’t any deals to be made.”
Sturgess tightened his grip on my father. Moved the needle a few millimeters closer to his neck.
“Then the old man comes with me. I need time. I need time to get away.”
I decided to stick with my best argument. “The police will be here before you hit the front door.”
“No,” Sturgess said. “They’re not coming. That’s bullshit. We’re leaving.”
He started to back up, carefully pulling my father with me.
“Don!” Mom cried from her spot on the bed. “Please don’t take him!”
With all that was going on, I almost hadn’t noticed that whatever it was I’d smelled in the hallway a minute ago was getting worse. I had a pretty good idea what it was.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Detective Duckworth called me a few minutes ago. He’s on his way here.”
Sturgess yanked even harder on Dad’s arm. “Then I guess we’d better go, old—”
The alarm was deafening. The high-pitched squeal went straight to my eardrums.
It had to be the smoke detector in the living room, the one outside the door to the kitchen. There was already smoke drifting up from the first floor.
I glanced back at my mother, who appeared to mouth the words “pork chops.”
Seventy
Dad must have figured this was his only chance.
While Sturgess was briefly distracted and overwhelmed by the wailing of the smoke detector, Dad wrenched his arm free and bolted — almost fell — in my direction.
Sturgess lurched after Dad, but I managed to get between them, reaching with both hands for the arm that had the syringe. I grabbed hold of his forearm and slammed it up against the wall, but the syringe didn’t fly out of his hand the way I’d hoped it would.
“Drop it!” I yelled.
His left hand reached over to try to take the syringe from his right. I shoved my body up against his, tried to roll over the front of him, block his free arm.
A knee came up out of nowhere and drove hard into my crotch, taking my breath away. The pain was excruciating, and for a second I lost my grip on Sturgess’s right arm. I stumbled back.
Madly he swung the syringe through the air as though it were a knife. I was jumping back and out of his way as we moved toward the stairs.
Dad came up behind Sturgess and kicked him in the back of his right thigh. The doctor dropped to the floor. I noticed that the syringe was no longer in his hand, but in the confusion I had lost sight of where it had gone.
“You son of a bitch!” Dad shouted.
I took advantage of Sturgess while he was down on one knee, and aimed a kick at his chest. I failed to catch him directly, and only knocked him off balance. His shoulder went into the wall. As I closed in on him, he pushed himself off and tackled me around the knees.
I went down.
More smoke began to billow its way upstairs. If those pork chops Mom had left untended on the stove were kicking up some flame, it was a safe bet that the overhanging cabinets and curtain at the window next to the stove were already ablaze.
Sturgess scrambled on top of me, straddled me so that he was sitting on my stomach, and drove a fist at my head. I turned my face away, felt the fist graze my left ear.
He brought his right hand back up to his left, laced his fingers together, getting ready to backhand me hard with a double fist.
This one was going to hurt.
But before he could start the downswing, I caught sight of Agnes standing over him.
Something in her hand.
She plunged the syringe into his back, the needle going through suit jacket and shirt.
“Shit!” Sturgess said, and stumbled off me. He struggled to his feet, looked over his shoulder, trying without success to see the syringe, which was still sticking out of him. He looked at Agnes and said, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
Agnes nodded.
“I haven’t got much time,” he said. “I’ve only got seconds. You have to...” He began to waver. “You have to move fast.”
Agnes didn’t move.
“Just die,” she said. “Just hurry up and die.”
Sturgess wavered, stumbled into the wall, back first. We heard a snap, and then the syringe, minus the needle, hit the floor.
I looked back into the bedroom. With Sarita’s help, Mom was struggling to get off the bed.
“Hurry,” I said. “I don’t know how bad the fire is.”
Dad got around to Mom’s other side. The three of them headed for the stairs. Dr. Sturgess was sliding down the wall.
I said to Agnes, “Is there anything you can do?”
She looked at me. “Even if there were... I’m sorry there isn’t a second needle. For me.”
“We have to get out.”
Agnes nodded calmly. Sturgess was on the floor now, but he wasn’t dead. His eyelids were fluttering. I leaned over to grab him under the arms so I could drag him down the stairs.
“Trust me,” she said. “He won’t make it to the front door.”
The eyelids stopped moving. I reached for his wrist, felt for a pulse, found nothing.
“Walk me out,” Agnes said.
We went down the stairs together. We could see flames in the kitchen. We found everyone else outside. Dad had grabbed a chair from the front porch and dragged it into the yard so Mom could sit down.
An unmarked police cruiser was screeching to a halt at the curb, Duckworth throwing open the door and getting out. He’d managed to block in the black Audi, where a nervous-looking Bill Gaynor was sitting behind the wheel, looking like a cornered mouse.
There was someone in the passenger seat of the cruiser.
Marla.
Duckworth, seeing the smoke, ran toward us. “Is there anyone still in the house?”
“Sturgess,” I said, propping up my father. “But he’s dead.”
Duckworth blinked. “From the fire?”
“No,” I said. “We need an ambulance for my mom. She can barely walk. My dad may be hurt, too.”
Duckworth whipped out his phone, barked out an address, demanded fire engines and paramedics. Neighbors were pouring out of nearby houses to see what all the commotion was.
Up the street I saw Ethan, backpack over his shoulder, walking home from school. He began to run.
I saw Agnes walking toward Gaynor’s car. She said something to him briefly, pointed a finger of judgment at him, then walked around to the rear passenger door.
Gaynor did nothing to stop her.
Marla was coming out of the passenger side of Duckworth’s cruiser, looking at the smoking house, more with wonder than anything else. She was so busy taking it in, she didn’t notice her mother prying Matthew from the safety seat in the back of the Audi. Once she had the boy in her arms, she started walking toward the unmarked cruiser.
“Dad! Dad!” Ethan cried, running into my arms, a look of horror on his face. “The house!”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s okay.” I wrapped my arms around him, held on to him tightly as I watched a different drama play out before me.