He grimaced at the verbal slap and nervously rubbed his hands together then lifted the woman’s lids.
“I don’t know... It... Yeah, I guess she’s gone.”
Whittaker whispered, “Jo, please... What are you doing?”
The woman turned disappointed eyes upon him. “It’s reckoning time, Averell.”
“What?” He winced.
“For one, stealing the company from my father...”
Whittaker snapped, “Your father was a drunk! He pledged shares for loans to cover his bad investments. Illegally. It took two years to get that nullified. I gave him a generous allowance.”
“He was humiliated.”
Whittaker muttered, “He made his bed. Some would’ve cut him off completely.”
“And dissolving the company? Everything Father worked for?”
“We wrote stories that cost lives. I can’t be a part of that anymore.”
He looked away, as Joanna continued, “Your foundation’s a joke. Nobody cares about the press, about news, about facts.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, yes.”
“I wasn’t going to dissolve your charity.”
Her face flared with rage. “Where you can count on your little niece to keep her head down and not get into any trouble.”
He looked at his son. “What’s wrong with him? What’ve you done?”
“He’s drugged.”
“We’ll work something out. Please...”
Her stern face, with the fleshy nose and thick eyebrows, gazed at him with what might perhaps be a modicum of sadness.
Then he thought of the security guard and knew there’d be no negotiation.
He saw the scene unfolding. They would kill him, using the same knife, then Kitt — probably injecting him with more drugs, an overdose. It would look like a suicide. The empire would go to Joanna.
“You’ll keep the company running,” he whispered.
“Yes, though, in a different direction. Verum?”
“The conspiracy theorist, the crank. Do you know him?”
With what Whittaker believed was a modicum of pride, she said, “I am him.”
“Jo... no! You don’t believe that crap.”
She scoffed. “And you don’t believe that stories about secret love children and the vice president’s grandfather helping Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy belong on a front page. But there they are. And that made you a very wealthy man.”
“It’s different,” he raged.
“You’re right, Averell. I’m the next generation.”
“Fah... Father...” Kitt was more aware now. He glanced at his wrists strapped to the wheelchair arms. He shook his head, took a breath. “Father?” His head drooped.
Joanna walked to her fiancé and was speaking to him. She appeared impatient.
Whittaker couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly. She apparently had killed the security guard, and it was now Kemp’s task to murder Whittaker and Kitt. But he was balking. Her face was filled with contempt.
He’d check pulses and eyes, he’d corroborate stories, but he wasn’t going to wield the blade.
“Martin,” Whittaker called.
But when the man looked his way, a pathetic expression on his face, and appeared about to speak, Joanna snapped her fingers and he fell silent.
She looked at him with disgust and, using a bloody plastic bag, picked up the knife that she’d used to kill Alicia. Striding across the sumptuous carpet to where he sat, she studied him, as if deciding to slash the left side of his neck or the right.
Whittaker slumped in the fake Chippendale chair, which he and Mary had bought in New England and refinished together after taking a class in doing trompe l’oeil and faux painting furniture. It had been a happy weeklong project.
Whittaker called in a weak voice, “Kitt?” Louder, “Kitt?”
His son opened his eyes.
Joanna stood over him and Whittaker, who looked up, expecting to see a hint of regret in that face, which bore a passing resemblance to that of his brother.
But there was none. Only regal impatience.
“Just let me say one thing,” Whittaker whispered, wincing as he shifted a few inches.
She paused and cocked her head toward him.
“I’m sorry, son.”
Kitt blinked slowly.
Averell Whittaker grabbed his cane in both hands — he’d been feigning injury to his shoulder — and swung the top, the brass head, with all his strength into his niece’s face.
64
Joanna was on her knees, howling in rage and pain.
She was still gripping the knife and slashing toward Whittaker’s legs as he rose. The blade did not connect and he launched his foot into her belly, doubling her over.
He turned to face Kemp, who was ashen white. The man had picked up another kitchen knife. He was advancing slowly. But his terror vastly outweighed his aggression.
Please, God, for the next ten minutes give me whatever strength You can. Let me save my son and then You can take me...
Brandishing the cane, Averell Whittaker strode across the room to meet Kemp head-on.
Joanna was struggling to stand. She spat blood.
Martin asked, “Honey, are you okay?”
“What a stupid fucking question. Kill him.”
Stopping six feet from Kemp, Whittaker said, “Martin, you can save yourself. It’s not too late. Call nine one one.”
The man debated a moment. Whittaker thought he might actually do so. But no. He’d never disobey Mama.
Holding the knife forward, he lunged, his face an odd mix of determination, anger and utter fear.
Whittaker stepped aside and swung the cane, forcing him back a few feet. Then looked past him and with wide eyes called, “Alicia, you’re alive!”
Kemp gasped and, before he caught himself, he turned to where the body lay.
Joanna shouted, “No, you idiot!”
It was only a half-second distraction but it was all that Whittaker needed. He swung the cane like a baseball bat and connected with the hand that held the knife. Kemp screamed — an actual high-pitched wail — and the blade fell to the floor, as Martin dropped to his knees, cradling his shattered fingers. Whittaker tossed away the cane and picked up the knife.
He turned to face his niece, who was scanning the entryway. She was looking at the floor.
Whittaker spotted the gun before she did, a small black pistol.
Joanna staggered toward the weapon. There was no chance that Whittaker could beat her to it. He did the only thing he could, slipped the knife into his pocket and stepped to Kitt, then pushed the wheelchair into the closest room, a library. He slammed the door and locked it.
He heard a crash as one of the two, Martin probably, kicked the wood hard.
Would she shoot her way in? That would hardly play, according to the fiction she’d created, but she was desperate.
The kicking stopped. He heard Joanna say, “Good idea.”
Whittaker looked around and spotted the landline phone. He lifted it and heard: “At the tone the time will be...”
Martin Kemp had apparently done something right.
Whittaker hung up, jammed a chair under the knob. He moved his son out of the line of fire in case Joanna did decide to shoot.
The kicking began again. One of the panels cracked.
Averell Whittaker withdrew the knife from his pocket.
65
My computer beeps.
I’ve been summoned by a ViewNow algorithm, so I put on my content moderator hat. I scoot the laptop closer and maximize the screen.
It’s a VNLive post. Tammybird335 is streaming in real time. She’s a pretty woman around twenty, I’d guess. Her long brown hair is flyaway and some strands are pasted to her face from tears. She wears a bulky sweatshirt with a high school crest on it — from a better place and time in her life.