“YOU PIECE OF HUMAN SHIT,” GROWLED A VOICE THAT resembled my own. “You twisted son of a bitch.”
Hamilton laughed. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t think my mother had much to do with this. I think most of the credit goes to you, Bill.”
“Bullshit,” I said without turning around. “You’re insane or you’re evil. Or both.”
“But why, Bill, and since when? I was a model of decency and stability until a year ago. Until you ruined me.”
Now I turned to face him-above me, silhouetted against the fading daylight-though I remained kneeling beside Miranda. “I pointed out a mistake you made in an autopsy, Garland. A mistake that would have cost an innocent man his life. It was a bad mistake, but it didn’t have to ruin you. You chose the path of ruin.”
“The path of ruin? The path of ruin?” He sneered it, coating the words with the slime of mockery. “Christ, it’s tough to pick just one thing,” he said, “but I think it’s the simplistic Brockton sanctimoniousness I’ll miss least of all.”
He bent down briefly, and when he straightened, he was holding a large container: a five-gallon gas can. He shook it, and light sparkled through a broken stream of liquid the color of tea. Then I felt the sting of the gasoline on my skin and in my nostrils.
“Fitting, don’t you think? Instead of me burned to death here, it’s going to be you and Little Miss Lovely.”
“No!” I jumped to my feet and lunged toward the corner of the basement. Leaping up as I ran, I planted a foot on the wall and transferred my forward momentum into vertical motion. I managed to grab both walls at the top and scrabbled at the concrete with my toes as I pulled with my arms.
Something swatted me down like a giant’s fist. I collapsed into the corner, bewildered at first. Then I felt a searing pain in my chest and realized I’d heard a loud pop. It gradually dawned on me that I’d been shot.
Bracing myself against the corner of the wall, I struggled back to my feet and staggered toward him, holding up both hands. “Don’t kill Miranda,” I begged. “She doesn’t deserve to die. She never did anything to you.”
“You still don’t get it,” he said. “I’m not killing her because she deserves it. I’m killing her to make you suffer. Just like I killed Jess to make you suffer.” He pointed at me and I saw a flash, and then my left leg collapsed. I tumbled to the floor beside Miranda, lying on my left side, my back to Hamilton. My field of vision began to shrink-as if I were peering through the wrong end of a telescope or a pair of binoculars-and I knew I was on the verge of losing consciousness. I felt more gasoline splashing me. Just let go, I thought. It won’t hurt as much that way. I focused on the blackness around the edges of my vision and I tried to embrace it, or let it embrace me, before the flames could.
But something wouldn’t let me let go, and through the pain and despair I realized that the something was Miranda. She was the only thing I could still see through the small tunnel of light, but she stayed there, stubborn as ever, refusing to fade to blackness. If I gave in now, I realized-if I took the easy, unconscious way out-I was giving up Miranda, too. I’d be giving her to Hamilton, who had already gotten Jess. I’ll be damned, I thought, if I let you take Miranda, too. Jess had been my lover, sweetly but briefly; Miranda had been my assistant, my colleague, and my protégée for years. Protégée, I thought: from the French word for “protect.”
Through the pain in my chest and my leg, I felt a surge of protectiveness and rage and hatred. It was small and tentative at first, but it caught and grew, like a fire whose heat draws in oxygen to feed its growth. For reasons I didn’t understand, I felt myself clutching at my chest, tugging at my shirt, fumbling with the flap of the pocket. Then I felt my fingers close tightly around something, and I realized what I held in my grip: Maybe it would be death, or maybe it would be deliverance, but it sure as hell would not be giving in. Miranda and I might be doomed-clearly we were-but I would not surrender her willingly.
I dragged my clenched fist across the concrete floor, then flung my arm into the air and opened my hand wide, as if waving good-bye to this world and all I’d held most dear within it. The fistful of kitchen matches I’d found in my pocket-the ones I stuffed there during the night’s storm-scratched and sparked, then burst into flame as I hurled them skyward. I looked up in time to see fire racing up the stream of gasoline that Garland Hamilton was pouring down on us. Hamilton recoiled reflexively from the fire, and when he did, the jerk of the five-gallon can drenched him in a shower of gasoline. Flames and smoke engulfed him instantly. He screamed and flailed atop the wall, a human ball of flame, and then I saw a tongue of fire licking toward me as well. I shielded my face with my arm and rolled atop Miranda to shield her. Casting a final glance up through the inferno, or through a dying dream of it, I thought I saw Garland Hamilton’s body take flight and arc through the darkening sky above me. It blazed like a human meteor, or some fire-demon released from hell. Then-only then-the constricting tunnel of vision and consciousness collapsed on me at last, and I sank into blackness and oblivion.