She didn’t move. The gun stayed pointed at his head. She said, “I think I will shoot you.”
Joe, wide-eyed, said, “Look, listen, just...”
“But I’m going to give you a head start,” she said. “I’ll count to five. See how far you can get.”
“This is crazy, you can’t—”
“One.”
“Sandra! Stop and think about what you’re—”
“Two.”
Joe glanced nervously to one side, then beyond Sandra, as though planning which was the best escape route.
“Three.”
He spun around a full one hundred and eighty degrees and bolted, but he didn’t get far. On his very first step, the toe of his right foot got caught under one of the pieces of broken fencing that the Cadillac had dragged through the yard.
Joe tripped.
His body pitched forward into the air. He threw both hands out in front to brace himself for his fall, but it turned out he wasn’t heading for the ground.
Joe was falling toward the left back corner of the Cadillac.
And its enormous, towering, chrome, dagger-like tailfin.
Joe tried to turn his body in midair to avoid it, but he was too slow. The side of his neck connected with the tailfin, and he struck it with enough force that the point went all the way through and came out the other side.
That was where he hung, impaled, and very dead, until teams of emergency responders swarmed the island later that night.
Fifty
It was nearly a month later when the body shop brought back Bruce’s Cadillac. He’d had it sent to a place on the mainland that specialized in restoring old cars, and luckily, this was not an operation that was particularly attentive to legitimate ownership. When they’d taken the car away on a flatbed truck, Bruce made no mention of the fact that it was not, technically speaking, his, or that the plates on it were not, in the strictest sense of the word, legit.
Mere trivialities.
Even before his release from the hospital he was scouting up good repair places. If it had only been the side of the vehicle, where the Arrival had plowed into him, it might not have been that big a job. But then he had to go and drive through half a dozen front yards and broadside that Arrival, then that son of a bitch Brandon Kyle put a bullet through the front windshield.
The repairs were going to take nearly half of Bruce’s savings. Oh well, you can’t take it with you.
He hoped Kyle spent the rest of his life in jail. And even though Massachusetts had outlawed capital punishment, there was still a chance the guy could be sentenced to death because the US government was pursuing various federal charges against him. It did have the death penalty, and if Uncle Sam wanted to fry his ass, they’d move him to another state to do it.
Garrett Island was, more or less, back to normal. The funerals, which were held over the course of three weeks, had finally come to an end. Forty-eight people had lost their lives. There was talk of erecting some kind of memorial in the town square. Some islanders were for it, others wanted to forget it had ever happened. The debate was expected to continue for some time.
Everyone on the island got their cars back. The Arrivals were put on a barge and taken to a landfill site in New Jersey. The Arrival corporation, which was facing more than a hundred lawsuits, declared bankruptcy. Shares in all companies that produced self-driving cars plummeted.
Gas prices went up.
The somewhat dimwitted Ronny was made interim chief. The island’s governing council was still shopping around for a sharper knife in the drawer. Deeper background checks had been promised for when the next chief was chosen.
It was early November and the tourist season was over, but there had been a few gawkers coming over from the mainland, wanting to check out the sites of the most serious mayhem. The mall had seen an uptick in visitors.
Lillian Bridgeman sold her house and moved to an assisted living facility outside of Boston.
Sandra Montrose decided to get out of the public relations business. There was an opening for a manager at one of the island’s most prestigious resorts, the kind of place where they held a G7 one year, and she got the job. She didn’t need a man in her life anymore.
Sandra had Adam. She talked to him all the time.
“Don’t you worry about Katie and Archie,” she would tell him, usually once she had slipped under the covers at night. “I’m looking out for them, one hundred percent, but the good thing is, they know how to look out for themselves. We done good, you and me.”
Katie was looking out the window when the flatbed truck pulled up in front of Bruce’s house. It was a Saturday, and not only was she home, but her mom and Archie were, too.
The three of them came out and slowly crossed the street as the green tarp shrouding the car was pulled away. Once the bed was slowly angled down to the road, the delivery guy crawled up the ramp, got into the Cadillac, and slowly backed it down to the street.
Bruce signed some paperwork and handed over a check, and once the truck was gone, all four of them walked around the car, admiring the work.
“You’d never know,” Archie said. “It looks fantastic.”
Bruce’s chest swelled. “Yeah, I’m pretty happy with it.”
Sandra managed to admire the vehicle without ever once looking directly at that one tailfin. “It’s a piece of art this car, honestly.”
Bruce continued to smile. He was spinning the key chain around on his index finger.
“Aren’t you going to drive it?” Archie said.
The retired teacher shook his head. “Can’t.”
“Why not?” Archie asked.
“No license.”
They were all quiet for a moment. It was Sandra who broke the silence. “Katie’s got hers now.”
Katie nodded. “Passed the test last week.”
“Well then,” Bruce said, tossing her the keys.
Katie snatched them out of the air, opened the driver’s door, and settled in behind the huge steering wheel. Sandra went to slip into the back, Bruce said, “No no.”
He walked her around to the passenger side, flipped the seat forward so he and Archie could jump into the back, and left the front seat for Sandra. She got into the car and closed the door.
Katie keyed the engine, bringing the car to life with a rumble. She looked across the expansive bench seat at her mother sitting there.
Sandra smiled. “Let’s go for a spin,” she said.