A sickening thud as the elderly psychiatrist pitched forward, slamming into the wall, driven by the force of the bullet. The phone in his hand crashed to the floor. He made no sound as he slid down-or none that she could hear, because in that moment she screamed: a high-pitched banshee-wail of immediate panic, shock and fear wrapped together in some primitive, desperate cry. It blended with Moth’s great shout of astonishment and surprise to create a harmony of terror.
It all happened so quickly that it took Andy Candy some time to comprehend what had taken place, and to collect all the disparate pieces of the killing and process it. It was a little like waking up from a nightmare of blistering heat, thinking, Boy, that was a nasty dream, and then recognizing that the house around her was actually on fire.
The detective questioning Moth was stocky, middle-aged, wearing an ill-fitting suit. “And what exactly did you do, after you realized the doctor had been shot?”
Moth tried to picture his actions, assessing what to put in-heroic-and what to leave out-panicked. What he had done was leap back, like a person coming upon a snake in the grass, before twisting and grabbing Andy in a bear hug and pushing her to the side of the entryway. As the doctor had crumpled to the floor, Moth had cowered beside Andy Candy, hovering over her as if shielding her from falling debris.
Then a different side of him took over, and he let her loose and rushed into the kitchen. All the elements of violent death were being sorted out in his head, and instincts he did not know he possessed were taking over. It did not occur to him that he was exposing himself to a second shot. He bent down, like a battlefield medic, only to pull his hands back sharply. He immediately recognized there was nothing he could do. No tourniquet. No clamping an artery. No CPR or mouth-to-mouth. Deep red blood was already pooling on the floor, marred by pieces of bone and viscous gray brain matter, and he could see the nightmare vision of gray hair matted by death, skull destroyed.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the array of weaponry on the table, and with a warrior’s cry of defiance, he jumped over, seized the shotgun, did not bother to check to see if it was loaded-which he wouldn’t have known how to do anyway-found himself tugging at the back door, losing seconds to a dead-bolt lock that he fumbled with, then racing crazily outside. He raised the shotgun, swinging it right and left, finger on the trigger, but could see no target. Some vague notion of protecting Andy Candy and himself penetrated his fear. He held his breath.
He stood stock still for what were only seconds, but which seemed to draw out into some indistinct, massive length of time. Night seemed to drop around him, cloaking him in darkness. He wanted to shoot something, or someone, but there were nothing but shadows surrounding him, stretching out of the nearby forest across the doctor’s backyard. Mocking him.
So, he went back inside.
“It’s okay,” he said to Andy, although how he could reach this conclusion eluded him, as it did with what he said next. “Whoever it was has disappeared.”
Andy Candy thought she should cry. She felt tears in her eyes, but an almost iron stiffness throughout her body. She lingered in the doorway to the kitchen, frozen, eyes fixed on the doctor’s body, her hands covering her mouth, as if anything she might say would only add to the fear ricocheting within her. She imagined her feelings were as pale as she was sure her face was.
“Did we,” she stammered, “who, I mean…” She stopped. The who part she thought she knew. The did we part seemed ridiculous. Her words were so dry they scratched her throat.
Moth seemed cold, robotic. “We know who it was,” he said bitterly, putting sound to the thought that passed into her head. He laid the shotgun on the table.
Andy could feel sweat beneath her arms, although she shivered as if cold. She could not tell whether she was hot or freezing. “Moth, let’s get out of here,” she said. “Let’s just go. Right now.”
Run, she thought. Escape.
Then: From what?
And: Where to?
“I don’t think we can do that,” Moth replied.
At the moment she had no idea what was right and what was wrong, and she doubted that Moth did either. She could only imagine that another window was going to explode and a sniper’s bullets seek her or Moth out. She suddenly felt she was in terrible danger, that every second she lingered might give the assassin time to reload, draw a bead, and end her life.
Andy Candy lurched back, unsteady. One hand shot out and she grabbed at the wall. She felt dizzy and believed she might pass out.
“Help,” she whispered, although what sort of help she was requesting evaporated in the room. She had the odd thought: People think death is the end. It’s only the beginning.
Moth wanted to walk over, throw his arms around her, hold her tightly, stroke her hair, and try to comfort her. He had a cinematic vision of what a hero should do in a moment like this one, but he stumbled as he moved toward her, and then stopped a few feet away.
He saw Andy reaching for her cell phone. 911. Of course, he thought.
But he said: “Wait a second.” Comforting Moth disappeared, replaced by Thinking-like-a-killer Moth. He turned back to the weapons on the table. He replaced the shotgun, and picked up the.357 Magnum and all the boxes of shells for the handgun.
“We’re going to need this. And that, too.” He pointed at the legal pad with the doctor’s hand-scrawled notes. Andy Candy had dropped it to the floor in the entranceway.
“Wouldn’t the police…” she started, and then she understood what Moth was saying. She picked it up and handed it to him. She did not recognize the step she took for the immense danger that it represented, although she was vaguely aware that the two of them were stepping over lines and crossing boundaries that no rational person would.
“All right,” Moth said, tucking the legal pad under his arm. “Now, make the call.”
She dialed. “What do I say?”
“Tell them there’s been a death. Gunshot.”
She twitched, tension in every movement. “And when they get here, what do we say then?”
Good sense would have dictated that they instantly turn over all they knew, which wasn’t much, and all they imagined, which was a great deal, to the police, who were properly equipped to deal with homicide. In the same instant, both decided not to. The words It’s up to us flooded both of them. The idea of trying to turn over trust to some cop seemed not only stupid, but dangerous. So many deaths were jumbled in their minds that the ability to see matters rationally evaporated. Moth felt iron inside. All he could imagine was revenge.
He said coldly: “An accident?”
If everything around her was a merry-go-round of death and crazy, clinging to something that seemed to make sense when it actually didn’t was all Andy Candy could muster.
“All right,” Andy said. “An accident or something, or maybe we just don’t know.” This seemed awkward to both of them, but for different reasons. Moth found himself thinking, This is my fight. Andy Candy thought, Whatever it is you’ve started, you have to finish. Both failed to see these beliefs for the naïve romantic foolishness that they were.
“Just tell them what we heard and saw and that’s it,” Moth said. He paused. He felt like a pretentious theater director giving an actor her instructions. “Andy… Don’t act calm.”
She looked down at the doctor’s body. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes. What a strange request, she thought. But that was the extent of her ability to process anything happening around her.