“Good Lord,” Drummond exclaimed. “The last I remember, the leaves had just begun to fall.”
Cranch’s eyes drifted to the rotary telephone, leaving Charlie with a fresh coating of goose bumps. “Mr. Clark, please,” Cranch said. “You’ve had several clear-cut and extensive episodes of lucidity since autumn. Per my clinical experience with Alzheimer’s patients, I would expect-”
He stopped abruptly as Dewart slid from his chair, fell hard to the floor, and didn’t move.
Charlie supposed either the pain or the painkillers had gotten the better of Dewart. Then the Gatorade bottle rolled from Dewart’s hand, and Charlie had a better idea of what had happened: Drummond had just pretended to suck his finger as a means of pacifying himself. Really he tripped the spring-loaded release on his molar and, with incredible sleight of hand, while feigning focus on his shoes, he deployed his L pill. Once Dewart sipped the Gatorade, Drummond stalled until the saxitoxin took effect!
Cranch too eyed the rolling Gatorade bottle, possibly thinking the same thing. The thickest part of Drummond’s iron seat back flew into the interrogator’s head, crushing his skull from the sound of it.
With the cumbersome chair still cuffed to his wrist, Drummond dove at Dewart’s body and snatched the Glock from the dead man’s waistband. Bouncing up, he swung the chair as hard as he could into the mirror. The glass exploded like a bomb, spraying thousands of bits into the adjoining observation room.
From his seat in one of the recliners there, Karpenko rushed to take up his big AK-74. Two thunderclaps from Drummond’s Glock and Karpenko keeled over, spouting a rooster tail of blood. He fell into the recliner, flipped it over, then came to rest onto its upturned swivel base, almost certainly dead.
A third report from the Glock and the fair-haired guard, surging into the conference room from the hallway, fell as if clotheslined. Blood streamed from his forehead, turning the front of his powder-blue rugby shirt maroon. He was definitely done for. Still Drummond pounced on him. He retrieved a set of keys from the guard’s pants pocket, freed himself from the handcuff, then hurried to unbind Charlie.
Incredulity acted as a pain remedy for Charlie. “Good thing I came to the rescue,” he said.
The observation room preoccupied Drummond. Charlie followed Drummond’s gaze to the smoldering cigar in an ashtray on the arm of one of the empty recliners. The door was open.
“Fielding?” Charlie said.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he shoot back?”
“In his mind, what happened here is a positive step. Now the real inquisition can begin.”