19
Jeremy heard Moonglow's phone start to ring. He knew from his multiple calls tonight that her voice mail picked up after the fourth. He counted four rings.
Time to check her out.
He limped up to the dining room window and peeked in. Empty. But it of-lered a line ol sight into the living room at the Iront ol the house, and there he spotted her, sprawled on the couch.
Excellent.
He let himself in and made his way to where she lay with her eyes closed and mouth open. He nudged her.
Nothing.
Nudged her again—hard.
Nothing. Completely conked out.
Excellent.
He slipped his arms under her and lifted. Groaning with the pain in his knee, he carried her upstairs, stopping ever few steps and leaning against the wall to relieve the weight on his leg. Finally he made it to the master bathroom where he laid her gently in the tub—didn't want any bruises.
As he stepped back to stare at her, she began to snore.
Decision time: clothes on or off? Tough one. Different people did it different ways. Much as he'd love to see her naked again after all these years—what a fine piece of ass she'd been as a teenager—he decided to keep it simple.
Leaving her clothes on, he started the water, nice and warm.
While the tub was filling he returned to the kitchen where he loaded two baggies with ice cubes—Dawn's first aid for his bruises had given him this idea—then limped back upstairs. He arranged Moonglow's arms and hands on the edges of the tub, palms up, then placed an ice bag over each wrist.
During his seemingly endless years at Creighton, Jeremy had devoted a lot of time to planning his own suicide. He'd been sentenced to two consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole, so he was sure he'd never get out, and just as sure that he'd failed his daddy and the Bloodline. So what was the point of living—especially if it meant spending another thirty or forty years like that?
Of course if he'd known he was going to be let out for this drug trial, his attitude would have been different.
He'd been allowed to draw books from the Creighton library with all its medical texts, and he'd read a lot about suicide, especially accounts of failed attempts and the reasons they'd failed. Often it was ignorance—taking non-lethal doses of drugs or cutting a vein in the wrist instead of the artery, not knowing that a vein will often clot up long before the person bled to death. More often it was failure of nerve—the rope is tied to the beam and knotted around the neck, but the clown just can't make himself step off the chair; or the pistol is loaded and cocked with the muzzle pressed against the side of the head, everything in place except the guts to pull the trigger.
Jeremy had known he'd never have a chance at a gun, but getting hold of something sharp enough to slice through his skin was not all that far-fetched.
The most surefire way was to slice through one oi the big arteries in the neck, but Jeremy wasn't sure he could cut his own throat. And if he botched it—if his hand faltered and he didn't cut deep enough to get it done—he'd be on suicide watch the rest of his life.
He could slit his wrists, though. At least he thought so. So he'd studied up on wrist-slitting techniques, learning why the failures failed and the successes succeeded. The key was something called the radial artery. It lay closest to the surface at the wrist, on the near side of the base of the thumb—where doctors and nurses like to take the pulse. Put a deep long cut into one—or better yet, both—and life would pump out of you pretty damn quick.
The ice packs were his own innovation. He didn't know how far down the eight roofies had put Moonglow, so he figured the numbing effect of the cold would keep her still. The last thing he wanted was her waking up and starting to struggle when the blade bit into her arteries. The whole idea was to make this look well thought out and deliberate on her part: Her only child was pregnant and had moved out after a terrible fight. Her behavior had become increasingly weird. Finally, in a fit of depression, she took her own life.
Boo-hoo-hoo.
Poor Moonglow. Or Christy. Or whoever.
The water level had risen almost to her chin. He shut it off but left the ice packs in place a little longer—the more numb her wrists, the better. To kill time he wandered through the house, keeping an eye peeled for a certain Tal-bot's bag. Had she put that quarter mil back in the bank? If not, it sure as hell would come in handy. No good to her after tonight, that was for damn sure.
He found it lying on its side in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Take it or leave it? Who knew she had it? He, Dawn, her bank, and maybe—this was a long shot—her detective. Who had she told she was planning to use it to buy off her daughter's boyfriend? The bank? Hardly. The detective? Maybe, but he'd have no reason to believe she hadn't redeposited the money, and no way to find out.
He grabbed the bag and returned to the bathroom. He'd find a safe spot to stash it at his place for the big rainy day that was sure as hell on its way.
Okay. Let's get this over with.
He removed the ice bags, then pulled the utility knife from his pocket. He wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the handle, then guided the point of the blade toward her left wrist—she was right-handed so it made sense that she'd cut her left first. As he pushed it beneath the surface, he felt water fill his glove. Taking a breath, he made a deep, long cut along her radial artery. She gasped as crimson spurts swirled into the water. Her eyes opened and gave him a glassy stare that lasted maybe two seconds, then closed again.
Quickly he switched the knife to her left hand and sliced open her right wrist. Another gasp, and this time she twisted in the water, but that was over in a few heartbeats and she returned to snoring.
He let the knife slip from her fingers and fall to the bottom of the tub. He dumped the mostly melted contents of the ice packs into the bathtub and shoved the empties into his pockets. He removed his sodden gloves and wrung them out over the water, then settled back to watch.
He stroked her forehead. Sorry, sis. Why'd you have to interfere? Everything would be fine now and you'd be going about the rest of your life if you'd only minded your own damn business.
He realized her death would cut off a branch of the Bloodline, but it couldn't be helped. And Moonglow wasn't a branch that was going to bear more fruit anyway, so no big loss.
He watched her face grow paler as the water grew redder. She stopped snoring. Then she stopped breathing, or at least it seemed that way. Her body shuddered, then relaxed. As her mouth and nose slipped beneath the surface, he knew she was gone. He watched a couple of minutes longer for insurance, then gathered up his gloves and the money bag and started for the back door. As he stepped out onto her rear patio he heard her phone begin to ring.
He heard her outgoing message in his head: Vm sorry, I can't come to the phone right now…
Damn right you can't.
He'd thought he'd feel happy. After all, he'd just removed a big obstacle to the Plan. Instead he sensed a deep sadness and a vague queasiness, as if he'd done something terribly wrong. But how could anything done to preserve the Bloodline be wrong?
No… as the feeling persisted he realized that it wasn't quite that he'd done something wrong, it was that he'd made a terrible blunder. As if with this act he would set in motion a force that would destroy him.
Ridiculous. He'd been careful, he'd been thorough. He'd left nothing to connect him to what he'd already begun referring to as "that poor, troubled woman's suicide."