What is-he’s-is he-
Something shoved his shoulder. It felt like a punch, the kind of rough gesture men in pubs gave one another. Christopher glanced down and saw a hole in the Egyptian cotton of his shirt, then red, red-What? No.
He couldn’t believe it.
The pain surfed the wave of comprehension, suddenstabbingburning, and he gasped. Tried to move his arm and fire spread down it. A scream of horn jerked his eyes back to the road. He was feet from the back end of a semi. Panic overwhelmed pain as he spun the wheel, yanked it right. The car fought to respond. The tires shrieked, loud and embarrassing. The car cleared the end of the semi, but the spin had it now, chaos taking control. For a terrible second he thought it might roll, but it just kept turning, the heavy guardrails of the bridge, open sky beyond, then the front of the car was facing the wrong way, traffic racing toward him, cars struggling to stop, and then he saw the battered Mercedes headed right for him, and through its broken windshield he thought he saw Jon Nunn’s face.
Then the car slammed into the Aston Martin and ground and sky switched places.
Jon Nunn felt as if he’d been punched by a giant’s fist.
The impact had slammed him against his seat belt, sent his body rocking forward, but before his head could hit the wheel the air bag had exploded, a confusion of white and gray and the smell of gunpowder and a wallop to his chest and face.
For a moment there was only the feel of it against his cheek, and pain.
Slowly the drone of a horn penetrated. The world was dark, then he realized his eyes were closed.
When he opened them, he was staring over the deflating air bag, through the splintered windshield, at the graceful sweep of a bridge cable two feet thick. The barrier rail was crumpled and torn.
And atop it, upside down, a car that had once been beautiful rocked like a seesaw.
Nunn shook his head, regretted it immediately. Pain sloshed in his skull.
He fumbled for his seat belt. Pushed the air bag away, opened the door. Dropped out, catching himself on the window frame.
The night was cool and burnished with mist. The glowing bridge lights were fairy lamps. A passing car began to slow. Jon gestured them on, didn’t realize he still had the gun in his hand until the driver roared away.
Somewhere far off, sirens rose.
Jon took a tentative step, then another. Everything hurt, but nothing seemed broken.
The engine of the Aston Martin ticked. Something metal creaked. The roof of the car was crumpled by the concrete barrier. As he watched, something gave, and the car slipped an inch farther toward the abyss.
“Help me.”
The voice was thin. Jon followed it until he could see Christopher Thomas. The face was different. It wasn’t just that he hung upside down, or the blood streaming from his nose, or the ragged mess of muscle and tissue that was his shoulder. It was the eyes. The cocksure certainty was gone. In its place was a raw and animal panic.
Nunn stared at those eyes for a long moment. Then, slowly, he tucked the gun back into his holster.
Thomas’s right hand still clutched the steering wheel, but the fingers were shaking. “You can’t do this.”
“What?”
The breeze off the water smelled vibrant and alive. The car groaned as the wind whistled over it.
“You can’t kill me.”
Jon shrugged. “I’m not killing you.”
“Then help me.”
“Help yourself.”
Thomas stared with a 100-proof hate. Slowly he took his hand off the wheel and fumbled for the door. Nunn watched. The man was pale and shaky. He got a grip on the handle and tugged it. The angle of the car caused the door to swing open wide, pitching the balance of the car. There was a sound of sickening friction. The hood tilted down. Christopher threw himself back in his seat and turned to stone.
Jon Nunn thought of Rosemary after the injections, the way her skin had faded almost immediately. The sirens drew closer. More than one of them, and coming fast.
“You’re not a cop anymore.” Christopher was laying a veneer of reason over a wobble of panic. “You can’t do those things. Shoot at people. Chase them.”
“I did them anyway.”
“Get me out of here.” The wind sighed, and the car slipped again. “Get me out and I’ll tell them it was just an accident.”
Nunn didn’t move.
“I’ve got money. In the back. Millions.”
Nunn didn’t move.
“It won’t change anything, you know. Killing me. It won’t bring Rosemary back.” The man’s voice was rational, not quite pleading. “The dead stay dead. You’ll just have one more ghost. Can you handle that, Jon? Another ghost?”
“I don’t know,” Nunn said, surprised to realize he meant it. He was tired, so very tired, and Thomas was right. You didn’t have to work homicide long to realize that vengeance did nothing to decrease the sum total of pain in the world. Not only that, but there would be consequences for his actions tonight. Everything he’d done since leaving the museum had been beyond the law. If he could produce a murderer, banged up but alive, it would go a lot easier on him.
Christopher was just trying to save his own tiny life; Nunn knew that. But that didn’t make him wrong. If Nunn let this happen, he would pay penalties-and possibly they were more than he could bear. He realized that, took a moment to acknowledge it. Then he said, “I don’t know if I can handle another ghost, Christopher. But you know what?” Jon Nunn smiled. “I don’t care.”
The man’s mask of reason disintegrated. “Goddamnit, get me out of here! Do you know who I am? Do you?”
“Yes.” Nunn took a moment to think of Rosemary, and to pray that she forgave him. “You were Christopher Thomas.”
Then Nunn turned and walked back to the Mercedes. A huddle of cars had stopped, people half in and half out. They froze when they saw him. Nunn ignored them. Carefully, he took the gun from his holster. He locked the safety, bent to set it on the ground. He could see the police cars now, two of them, lights flashing bright against the night, and behind them an ambulance. Nunn put his hands on his head and laced the fingers together. The first of the police cars jerked to a stop, two beat cops boiling out. Slowly, painfully, he eased himself down to his knees.
And as he touched the cold ground, as the police surged toward him and the breeze blew soft, as the lights of San Francisco twinkled through the fog, he heard a sound. A slow, metal creak like the yawn of some great beast, and a rush of air, and mixed with it, something that might have been a scream.
But not until he heard the splash did he let himself smile.
Diary of Jon Nunn, Last entry Jonathan Santlofer and Andrew F. Gulli
I was detained for a couple of days. The cops asked me a hundred questions. Then they asked me a hundred more. I didn’t have all the answers, but I had enough. I knew that Christopher Thomas had faked his death. That Peter Heusen had helped him. That Artie Ruby had aided and abetted by shipping the iron maiden off to Germany. That Stan Ballard had worked with Peter to make both of them multimillionaires while cheating the Thomas children.
And I knew something else-none of it really mattered. Rosemary Thomas was still dead.
Tony Olsen spoke on my behalf. He had more than a little influence with the SFPD, and a few of my old colleagues spoke for me too. Then Tony gathered up everyone one more time and got them to tell what they knew, or thought they knew.
Belle McGuire described how an unknown man, who she now believed had to have been Christopher Thomas, had assaulted her in her studio and displayed the red mark that was still on her neck where he’d drawn a palette knife across it. Her husband, Don, corroborated her story and even put in a good word for me. I’m not sure why. Probably because he’d wanted to hunt down Christopher himself and my doing it was the next best thing.