“I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND BUT I’M also going to take some of your toys with me,” Rick said, motioning in the direction of my study. “You’ve got some of the neatest stuff in there. I love that Klingon warship, and you’ve got some terrific little Star Wars spaceships.” He came over, looked at me. “Can I ask you a question?”
Still taped into the chair, I raised my head feebly. “Go ahead.”
“Which do you think is better? Star Trek or Star Wars?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at Sarah, tied up in her chair across from me on the other side of the kitchen table, who’d already seen too much to be surprised by this line of questioning. “Which do you think is better?”
“I think Star Trek.”
“Me, too.”
“Really? You know why I like it better? More chicks in little short outfits. At least in the original one. The Next Generation, they toned it down a bit. Until that Voyager show, and the Borg chick, with the really tight costume. Man.”
Suddenly, as if he’d forgotten something, he went back into the study. A moment later he returned to the kitchen holding a model of the saucerlike spacecraft from Lost in Space, the Jupiter 2. Actually, he was flying it more than holding it, carrying it a couple of inches away from his eyes. One was closed, the other squinting, like he was picturing the craft zooming through the galaxy.
“Okay, I’m taking this, too, but there’s a part that’s broken off it.”
“It’s the door,” I said. “It needs to be glued back on. It’s on the shelf right where the model was.”
And then he was gone, looking for it. He returned with the model ship, the door, and a small container of liquid plastic cement he’d found on my modeling table.
“I want you to fix it,” he said. “I was never very good at this sort of thing. I always put on too much glue and ruin it.”
“I’m kind of tied up at the moment.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to let you use your right hand.” He began to unwind the duct tape that held my right wrist to my chair.
“I’m gonna need both hands,” I said. “If I’m going to glue it and then hold the door in place.”
“I look stupid to you? You can do it with one hand. I’ll help you, and then we’re going to talk about finding that ledger for Mr. Greenway.”
He unscrewed the cap on the liquid cement. With my free hand I set the door on its back side so I could apply cement to the parts that would come in contact with the ship.
“How about this,” I said to Rick as I dabbed a bit of glue onto the door. “I’ll tell you more about that ledger, but you have to let me tell you about another story I’m working on first.”
“What? Like another science fiction book?”
“No, this one’s a bit different. It’s sort of a mystery, about a double-cross.”
“Oh yeah? I always like those. Like you think the guy is your friend, but then you find out he’s your enemy.”
“This one’s about a guy who does all the dirty work for his boss, takes all the risks, but gets shafted in the end.”
Rick eyed me warily. “Go on.”
“He even kills for his boss, that way the boss is protected, you know? There’s some distance between him and the crime, so that if he has to, he can deny knowing anything about it.”
Rick frowned. “Doesn’t sound like something that would interest me.”
“No? It should. I’m basing it on you. Here, press the door into place, now hold it for a few seconds till it sets. In this story, you’re the central character. You’re the one getting double-crossed.”
“Sure I am.”
“You know what your boss Greenway said to me-I don’t even know how long ago, I got no idea what time it is now. But earlier tonight, he said something very interesting to me.”
“What he say?”
“He said, ‘What if we gave you Rick?’”
Rick ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “Whaddya mean, what if he gave you Rick?”
“He said, ‘What if we give you Rick for the murders of Spender and Stefanie? We get him to take the fall for that, and then we give you whatever you want.’”
“That’s bullshit.”
“It didn’t sound like bullshit a little while ago. You see, I may not look like I’m in a good bargaining position right now, but a couple of hours ago, I kind of had the jump on your boss and his friend Carpington, and they were ready to say anything to put themselves in the clear. Greenway said you’re a hothead, that you killed those people, and he’s prepared to give you up to save himself. He’s in some pretty deep shit now. This whole thing’s falling apart around him, and if he can keep his ass out of jail by giving you to the cops, I think that’s what he’s going to do. And you know Roger will go along. That guy cries for long-distance commercials.”
“You’re lying.”
“And it seemed like a good idea to Mr. Benedetto, too. He just showed up at the office, I think they’re going over the final details now of how to hang you out to dry for all this. And if you kill us, thinking you’re doing it in Greenway’s interests, well, I wouldn’t be looking for him to back you up.”
“That’s fucking shit!” Rick said, making a fist and bringing it down hard on the model, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Sarah, even tied in the chair, jumped, the chair legs squeaking as they moved an inch across the floor.
Then Rick was very quiet, thinking about it, not sure whether to believe me or not. But it was probably the kind of thing he’d always suspected. Slowly, the rage was boiling up in him. Pretty soon he’d have to get out his baseball bat and smash another car. “Those fuckers,” he said. “They can’t do that.”
“You think they wouldn’t? You really think they-”
There was a loud banging on the front door. We all turned our heads in the direction of the noise. Rick sidled over to the counter and took the knife into his hand.
Sarah and I exchanged glances. It couldn’t be Angie or Paul. They had keys. And even if they’d forgotten them, they’d never bang the door that way.
The police, we thought. Maybe, finally, the police had figured out I was somehow involved in this mess. Maybe they’d checked the last few calls made to Stefanie Knight’s phone, recorded the numbers. Discovered that one of them was my cell, and now they wanted to know what I knew about her murder.
Lots! Ask me anything! I’m ready to talk!
“You stay here,” Rick said to both of us, and I thought: Duh. And: “Don’t make a sound.”
I guess, realizing he might not be able to count on us in this regard, he put the knife back down and ripped off two broad pieces of duct tape. One piece got slapped across my mouth and the other across Sarah’s.
There was another loud knock on the door.
Rick grabbed the knife and ran out of the kitchen. I reached up with my one free hand and pulled the tape back off my mouth. Sarah rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Can this guy not get anything right?”
I heard him reach the front hall, and imagined that he had probably peeked through the glass beside the door to see who’d come calling.
I heard him throw the bolt. Whoever it was, it was someone he was willing to admit into the house. I started clawing at the tape that was wound around my body.
“Mr. Benedetto,” Rick said. There was no warmth in his voice.
“Rick,” Mr. Benedetto said. I heard the door close again. “Mr. Greenway had a feeling you might be over here, tending to a few things.”
“Yeah.”
There were so many layers of tape, I was having a hard time tearing through them. So I tried reaching around, to free my left hand.
“We’ve got a bit of a problem, and you being quite the handyman, we thought you might be able to assist us. If you take a look out there, you’ll see Mr. Greenway and that Mr. Carpington out by the car there, and they’re both in handcuffs.”
“What?” said Rick. In his mind, handcuffs meant cops. Clearly, there had been developments he was not aware of. “So it’s true.”
“What, Rick? What’s true?”
“The cops have already picked them up. And they’re going to cut a deal. What did the cops say to you? That if you came in here and got me, they’d cut you a deal, too?”
I peeled one layer of tape from around my left wrist. There felt like only one layer left. As I picked at it, I wriggled my left wrist around, trying to stretch the tape enough to slip my hand out.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rick. But maybe you could tell me what’s going on here. Is Mr. Walker here? Did you recover the ledger?”
“Walker told me what’s going on. That you guys are going to turn me over for the Spender thing. And for Stefanie. You know I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Rick. Maybe you could come out and give us a hand.”
My left hand broke free of the tape. But I was still wrapped into the chair, and my ankles were anchored to the legs.
“A hand?” Rick’s voice suddenly became more calm. “Sure. I’ve got some tools out in my trunk. Why don’t you come with me, I can show you. I got all kinds of stuff in there.”
And the door opened again, and closed. And there were no more voices in the house.
I looked at Sarah. I said, “He’s out of the house.” She nodded furiously, her eyes wide with hope above the band of tape. “If I can get to the door, I can lock it.”
I tipped forward, the chair moving with my body, tried to balance on my tiptoes. I put my hands on the table, balanced on one and leaned across to pull the tape off Sarah’s mouth.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
I tried to hop, but fell. But with my arms free I was able to drag myself, and the chair, forward. I scrambled across the kitchen’s linoleum floor, reached the broadloom with upgraded underpadding in the hall. There wasn’t time to try to force myself back into a sitting position, regain my equilibrium, and take another run at hopping. I just kept dragging myself, trying to push with my toes. The rug burned against my elbows as I neared the front door, and if my knees could have screamed they would have. I could see the deadbolt, set in the unlocked position. Only a few more feet. Just a few more.
I reached the door, and, lying on my side with the chair still attached to my body, I reached up and turned the bolt.
“It’s locked!” I screamed to Sarah.
“Good!” she screamed back.
“Can you get to the phone?”
“I’ll try!” There was the sound of her chair sliding across the floor in short bursts.
I shifted my head over toward the edge of the door, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening outdoors through the narrow floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. The sun had crested the horizon, and I could see clearly what was happening.
Stefanie’s Beetle still sat in the middle of the yard. Benedetto’s BMW was parked at the curb, Greenway and Carpington, their hands still cuffed behind them, leaning up against it. From my vantage point, I couldn’t quite see Sarah’s Camry, or Rick’s car behind it. Greenway and Carpington were watching something take place in the vicinity of Rick’s car, and it scared Carpington enough that he turned and began running down Chancery Park, toward Lilac. Greenway was shouting, shaking his head no, ordering Rick to do something. It looked like he was yelling “Let him out!”
I was guessing that, by now, Quincy was wide awake.
Now Rick came into view, still waving around his switchblade. He grabbed Greenway by the shoulder and started hustling him in the direction of the front door. He grabbed the handle and pushed as though he expected it would open. When it didn’t, he shouted, “Open this fucking door!” He slapped it with the palm of his hand.
“I’m almost there!” Sarah called. “But I can’t get my hands free!”
“Open it! Walker! Open this door!”
He kicked at it twice, but it didn’t budge. Then he kicked at the glass, but it only cracked slightly. “You’re dead!” he screamed. “When I get in there you’re dead!”
And he disappeared.
He was running around the house, looking for other ways in. I heard him try the garage doors, but they were locked as well. A few seconds went by and then Sarah screamed, “He’s here!” She would have meant the sliding glass doors, but I knew they were locked, too. Would he try to smash them in?
Even from my position at the front of the house, I could hear Rick screaming at the top of his lungs and banging the knife against the glass. “I’m going to cut out your fucking hearts!”
“Oh God!” Sarah said.
“What?”
“The ladder! He’s going up the ladder!”
Oh no. The ladder I’d left leaned up against the back of the house so that I could regularly caulk around our bedroom window. And I was betting that our bedroom window was open. We usually left it that way, to allow fresh air in at night while we slept. With that knife, he’d be through the screen in seconds.
“Zack! He’s at our window! He’s going in!”
I tried to shift around the floor, the chair legs digging sideways into the carpet. I thought about how Sarah would hear him kill me before her. From where I lay, I could see the stairs to the second floor, and of course he’d spot me first on the way down. Sarah would have to listen to me scream as he cut me open. I wondered if there was a way I could face the end with anything resembling dignity. If I could keep from screaming, would it make Sarah’s last few moments any less terrifying? At that moment, that was all I could think to give to her, to let her die knowing that I had not suffered that severely. That while not painless, it had not gone on long. It wasn’t much of a birthday present, but it was all I had to give.
“He’s in! He’s in!”
She didn’t have to tell me. Rick’s entrance into our bedroom had been announced with a crash. Our dresser is under the window, and in coming through it, Rick had sent a lamp to the floor.
I heard him cackle. “Your hearts!” he screamed. “I’m gonna fucking eat them!”
And I thought about Paul and Angie, about how sorry I was to have done this to them, to have allowed their parents to be taken away from them, much too soon, and in such an ugly fashion. Would my dad take them in, or maybe Sarah’s parents? Or would Angie turn into an adult overnight, look after Paul herself, tell her grandparents that she could handle this on her own? It would be like her to try, I thought. She was tough, and proud, and she’d feel honor bound to look after her little brother all by herself.
Rick was out of the bedroom and running down the hall. I saw his shadow fall across the top of the stairs.
This was it.
“Sarah,” I said. Not a scream. I just wanted to say her name. And to make one final apology: “I’m sorry.”
Rick came flying down the stairs. I don’t mean he was running quickly, taking the steps two or three at a time. He was airborne.
His head was thrust out well ahead of his body. His arms were outstretched, the knife forging out ahead of him in his right hand. His feet were off the ground. If he’d worn a cape, it would have been flowing and rippling in the breeze behind him.
His mouth was open in astonishment. This, evidently, was not how he’d planned to come down this flight of stairs. Now his arms were waving, his legs kicking, trying to make some sort of purchase, to regain his footing.
As he pitched forward, his right arm hit one of the lower steps first, his elbow cracked, and his forearm snapped back, angling the knife toward himself. And then his neck connected with the upturned blade, and the weight of his body drove it deep into him, and his mouth opened even wider, but no sound came out.
He came to rest two steps from the bottom, his arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles. From his neck, the blood spilled forth as if from an open tap. The gathering pool spread from the second step and down to the first.
And tumbling after him, like an afterthought, like a second punch line to a joke you thought was over, came Paul’s backpack. It bounced a couple of times, then settled next to Rick’s head in the blood.