Davy hurried into the room followed by a still-apprehensive Father John. The dog, who had once seemed so ferocious, now showed absolutely no interest in attacking the priest. Instead, he put one tentative foot in front of the other and tried to walk, only to fall down flat on his belly.
“That dog’s been poisoned!” Father John announced decisively. “I’ve seen it before. We’ve got to get him to a vet.”
“Poisoned?” Diana repeated. “How can that be?”
“Look at him. I had a dog die of poisoning once. He came inside acting just like this. The vet said that if I’d brought him in right away, he might have saved him. There’s no time to lose.”
Uncertain what to do, Diana glanced at her watch. A quarter to six. The vet’s office would close in fifteen minutes. Rita reappeared just then. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s Oh’o. Father John thinks he’s been poisoned. We’d better load him in the car. Davy, Rita, come on. We’ll all go.”
Rita shook her head. “Fat Crack will be here soon. You go on. If we all go, Davy and I will just be in the way. We’ll wait here. I’ll call Dr. Johnston and tell him you’re coming.”
On the floor between them, Bone’s body shook convulsively. One look at the suffering animal convinced her. “All right,” Diana said. “You stay here.”
Diana knelt beside the quaking dog. “Bone, come,” she ordered. With a whimper, the dog tried valiantly to get up, only to stumble and collapse once more. Diana attempted to pick him up by herself, but he was well over one hundred pounds of dog, far more than she could lift or carry.
“Father John, would you help me load him into the car?”
“Of course.”
Lifting together, they raised Bone off the floor and carried him outside. “My car’s out back,” Diana said, heading that way.
“No,” Father John corrected. “We’ll take mine. It’s closer.”
They reached the car and eased the stricken animal onto the backseat. As Diana straightened up, she found that Davy had followed them and was starting to climb into the car with Bone. Diana stopped him. “You stay here with Rita,” she ordered. “If she has to leave before I get back, you can go along with her.”
Davy, close to tears, barely heard her. “Is Oh’o going to die?” he asked.
“I hope not, but I don’t know,” Diana answered grimly. She climbed into the car and closed the door behind her while the priest started the engine. Before driving out of the yard, Father John stopped the car beside the distressed child and rolled down his window.
“Remember how we were talking about prayer a while ago?” the priest asked. Davy nodded. “Would you like me to pray for Bone?”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, please,” he whispered.
“Heavenly Father,” the priest said, bowing his head. “We pray that you will grant the blessing of healing to your servant, Bone, that he may return safely to his home. We ask this in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
“Does that mean he’ll be all right now?”
Father John shook his head gravely. “When God answers prayers, He can say either yes or no. Right now, it’s too soon to tell. You keep on praying while we take him to the vet, okay?”
“Okay,” Davy said, his voice quavering. “I will.”
Andrew saw the priest and the woman drive away in a hurry. The dog was with them in the car. They were probably taking the mutt to a vet. Maybe it would work, but he doubted it. He had put enough slug bait in that hamburger to choke a horse. This was, however, one very large dog.
Carlisle turned back toward the house in smug satisfaction and saw the boy walk dejectedly back into the house. Everything had worked like a charm, just the way he’d planned it. The boy was as good as his. It was stupid of Diana to leave him there alone, but that was her problem. Diana was gone, and the boy was unprotected, and Andrew Carlisle wanted Davy in the very worst way.
Sliding down the mountain, not caring now whether or not he stayed out of sight or made too much noise, Andrew Carlisle started toward the house. He had spent seven long years waiting for this moment. Now that it was finally starting, he could barely contain himself. Diana Ladd was going to make it all worthwhile.
At ten minutes to six, when the phone rang in the house on Weber Drive, Myrna Louise was waiting. She had gone out to the car to bring in her suitcase from the trunk and had subsequently discovered everything hidden there-her bankbook, her blank checks, the gun, the bag of lime, and the luggage with someone else’s name on it. She didn’t bother to open the luggage. It had been stolen from someone else as surely as her own savings-account book had been stolen from her. And her cash, too, as she discovered moments later.
For half an hour now, she had sat quietly in her rocking chair, wondering what it all meant. She had already assimilated the idea that Andrew, her own son, had meant to kill her, would have killed her, if she hadn’t taken the crazy notion into her head to drive off in the car. Sure knowledge of Andrew’s murderous intentions had shocked her at first, but initial shock had worn into fuming anger.
Now, she sat rehearsing what she would say to him when Andrew finally called her, as she knew he would. She had considered turning him in herself but decided against it. Someone else would have to do the dirty work, not her, not his own mother. But if the cops happened to come to her house looking for him, she wouldn’t raise a hand to stop them.
Constantly rephrasing her speech, she decided to tell Andrew that if he ever came near her again, if he ever darkened her doorstep or wrote her a letter or even so much as tried to contact her by phone, she would see to it that he rotted in prison for the rest of his natural life. How did that sound?
Andrew had finally stepped beyond Myrna Louise’s considerable threshold of tolerance. Having once reached the end of her rope, she determined to no longer have a son. She would declare him null and void. As far as she was concerned, Andrew Carlisle would cease to exist.
So when the phone finally rang, it was his voice she expected to hear on the other end of the line, whining and blathering. Instead, the voice was that of a total stranger.
“Is Andrew there?” the man asked.
Myrna Louise’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to conceal her disappointment “Who’s calling, please?” she asked guardedly.
“A friend of his,” the man said. “Is he there?”
“Not right now. May I take a message?”
It sounded as though the person on the other end of the line let out a long sigh, but Myrna Louise couldn’t be sure.
“No,” he said. “That’s all right. I’ll call back later.”
He hung up-slammed the phone down in her ear, actually. She hung up, too, sitting there for a long time afterward with her hand still resting on the receiver. She wished it had been Andrew on the phone so she could have had it out with him once and for all, but it wasn’t. For that she would have to wait a little longer.
The human body isn’t quite like anything else, Brandon Walker thought. People talk about pulling the plug, but just turning off life-sustaining machines doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over, doesn’t mean the person gives up the ghost and dies the way a light goes off when you disconnect a cord from the socket. It wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever is.
The machines had been silenced for over an hour now, but Toby Walker stubbornly clung to life, persisting in breathing on his own much to the doctor’s surprise and dismay. His blood pressure was gradually falling, but there had been no marked or sudden change.
Nurses looked in on them every once in a while, respectfully, as though conscious that their presence was now an intrusion, not a help. Their concern focused on the two nonpatients-a woman quiet at last, worn out from continual weeping, and a man, the son, whose narrow jaw worked constantly, but who sat beside his dying father stiff and straight, dry-eyed and silent.