by Ray Garton
“You seem awfully happy,” Fara said.
Corcoran, still smiling, said, “Who, me? Well, Dr. McManus, if you’d taken the opportunity to get to know me during our time here, you would know that I am generally a happy person. I am optimistic, upbeat, and good-natured, and there’s very little that can get me down.”
“Even this? A hurricane? A raid by a private militia? The discovery of your kidnapped human subjects, and the potential spread of the deadly virus you’ve created? To say nothing of a possible career-ending scandal that could land you in prison? None of that troubles you?”
“I remain singularly untroubled.”
“Well, that could be the drugs.”
His smile opened and he laughed quietly. “You could be right.”
“You’re wasted,” Fara said. She spoke quietly, but with contempt and anger. “Like some teenager. Completely wasted.”
“I’d hate to be in this situation without some chemical assistance,” Corcoran said with a chuckle, “but I assure you I am quite sound.” He smiled at the ceiling.
“How can you call yourself a scientist and do the things you’ve done here, conduct yourself the way you have, I mean, the drugs, the parties—”
“Dr. McManus, I call myself a scientist precisely because I do the things I’ve done here. Your morals and your righteous indignation are admirable, but science does not share them, nor does it give a damn about them. You’re free to express them as long as you continue to allow me to do things that ultimately save lives. Possibly millions of lives.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see any lifesaving being done with this virus.”
“It will be used in the defense of this country. In the defense of freedom. It’s very possible, even likely, that it will do work that our young men and women will then not have to do, and they won’t need to risk and lose life and limb in combat.”
“I bet you have a justification for everything you’ve done here, everything you’ve done before this. You’ve got it all worked out in your head, don’t you, in some way that makes you blameless?”
He nodded his head slightly, still smiling. “Go ahead and tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“Do you know what I’m going to do, Dr. Corcoran?” Fara said. “I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that your career and reputation are destroyed and that you go to prison for what you’ve done here.”
He lifted his head slightly and smiled at her for a moment. “Do you know what I think you’re going to do, Dr. McManus? I think you’re going to commit suicide. Or I think you’re going to fall ill and be diagnosed with a very rare, fast-acting cancer, and in a few weeks, you’ll be dead. Or I think your brakes will fail one day soon and you’ll go off a cliff and into a ravine and your skull will be crushed. Or I think you’re going to quietly die in your sleep one night soon. Or . . . something like that. Do you get the picture, Dr. McManus? You want to tell the world what we’re doing here? Fine. But everything has consequences. As you can see, I’m not too concerned, am I? Do I appear worried to you? I’ve been down this road with underlings like you before, underlings who suddenly discover they have a conscience and simply cannot live with themselves anymore. I’ve been down this road before and I’m still here. The same thing cannot accurately be said of them. You’re not in any position to destroy anyone or anything, Dr. McManus, and based on my past experiences in this line of work, I’m of the opinion that you won’t even have time to try.”
That seemed to deflate her, shrink her.
Corcoran suddenly dropped his feet to the floor, leaned forward in the chair, and spoke quietly into the phone. “Yes, it’s Corcoran. We have a big problem that will have to be dealt with immediately.” He turned the chair all the way around so the back of it faced them.
Fara went to the couch and slowly lowered herself onto it. Emilio noticed that her knees were bobbing up and down because she was shaking all over. He was afraid she was going into some kind of panic attack.
He sat down beside her and put an arm around her. “Look, I know you’re feeling a lot of bad crap right now, but you’ve gotta do me a favor and hold yourself together a little longer, okay?” He took both of her small, pale hands between his big, dark ones and rubbed them vigorously. “Until we get outta here. Then you can knock yourself out. But right now, we all need clear heads, and we need you to be clearheaded. You know this place better than any of us. We need you right now, Fara. Do you think you can keep it together a little longer?”
She nodded emphatically as she sat up straight and took a few deep breaths. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and swept them outward, wiping her tears.
“Yeah,” she said, sniffling. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”
“Thank you. After this is over, you can go out and get shitfaced. I’ll be your designated driver.”
“That . . . actually . . . sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun. We can go dancing. You like to dance?”
“Me? Oh, God, I haven’t danced since high school. And even then, I wasn’t any good at it.”
“Get drunk enough, it won’t matter.”
“That’s true.”
“That’s what we’ll do, then. You can go out and get as drunk as you want, and I’ll be your driver and bodyguard.”
“Would that be . . . a date?” She had gone from quivering and looking deflated and in pain to relaxing on the couch and smirking.
“Well, it can be, if you’d like. But if it’s gonna be a date, I think both of us should be drinking.”
“Sure. Even better.” She smiled. “Who’ll drive?”
“We can always take a cab.”
She laughed quietly.
“You feeling better?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He stood. “Look, I’m gonna join Ollie and have a look around out there. You gonna be okay?”
She stood, too. “Yes, because I’m going with you.” She turned to Corcoran, who still had his back to them. “I’m going to go see what happened, Dr. Corcoran.”
He ignored her.
Emilio turned to the masked man. “Why don’t you give me that gun now. I’m gonna go out and join Ollie. And she’s going with me.”
He thought about that a moment, then handed the gun to Emilio. Fara went to get her coat, put it on, then got the mini-Maglite from her purse. She removed something else, too, but slipped it quickly into the pocket of her coat. Then they left the office and went out into the dark.
35
Latrice turned to stone as she watched the old man rush toward her shrieking and aiming the gun between his hands directly at her. She was paralyzed because, in that moment, she knew she was going to die. He was going to start firing that gun and she would feel the bullets tear into her one at a time and then she’d be dead.
But he kept coming and he didn’t fire the gun.
He got closer and closer, mouth open as he screamed at her, but he didn’t fire the gun.
Latrice dropped her cell phone because she forgot she was holding it, then reached her left hand out toward the sink piled high with dirty dishes and closed it on the first thing she touched—something hard and cold, long and round, a handle of some kind—but when she tried to lift it, there was resistance, so she pulled hard, then gave it a strong jerk, and the pile of dishes and pots and pans collapsed in a loud clatter, some of them falling to the floor and scattering. A plate shattered on the tiles.
She threw the pot at the man as hard as she could and gasped loudly with surprise when it struck him on the forehead. That sent his feet flying upward and the gun flying from his hands and tumbling into the air.
Latrice watched all of this in slack-jawed amazement, as if it were a movie in which she was deeply involved, a movie that just kept surprising her.
He hit the floor ass first, but he never stopped moving. His arms and legs flailed, a giant spider on its back, as the gun slowly spun on its upward journey just a few feet f
rom her, then hung suspended in the air for a moment before starting back down again.
Latrice snapped out of that weird, dreamlike state and started grabbing for the gun. Her hands clapped together on empty air once, twice, and on her third try, her hand hit the gun and sent it flying away from her and toward Rosie’s motionless form. Her attention was diverted by a sudden change in movement on the floor from the old man.
He was getting up, scrambling to his feet, chattering to himself. He broke into a clumsy run toward her, kicking the dishes and cups and saucers that had fallen onto the floor from the sink. Halfway across the kitchen, he bent at the waist so his head was level with her abdomen.
“Motherfucker,” Latrice said behind clenched teeth as she tried to kick him, only to find that she was no better at kicking than she was at grabbing.
His head butted her in the stomach and emptied her lungs as she went down on her ass with a loud grunt. Pain exploded from her coccyx and she cried out, but she didn’t stop moving, either. She knew he would go for that gun and she couldn’t let that happen. Fortunately, pain only made her angry. None of the people who knew Latrice well wanted to be around her when she was in pain, no matter how much they loved her, and she knew that and understood. Pain made her pissed off at the world.
“Motherfucker!” she said loudly and firmly as she got to her knees.
The old man, still looking like a spider somehow, was on hands and knees now, crawling frantically toward the gun on the floor. It had landed in the corner by the neglected dishwasher, beneath a row of drawers, in the triangle of space between the corner and Rosie, who still lay unconscious where Latrice had put her.
Latrice grabbed the lip of the counter with her left hand and got to her feet, then reached into the dirty dishes with her right hand and groped for a different kind of handle this time.
When he lunged for the gun, the old man landed on top of Rosie, and she stirred. He grabbed the gun from beneath the overhanging edge of the cabinet and drawers and backed away on hands and knees, moving quickly but clumsily.
Rosie screamed. The piercing sound went into Latrice’s ears like a couple of hatpins as she closed her hand on a thick, heavy, wooden handle and drew it from the mess.
Rosie kicked and thrashed her arms as she continued to scream and the old man cried out in surprise at her sudden outburst. He raised the gun and fired it into Rosie’s confused and terrified face.
The scream was cut short and Rosie went limp.
The old man went even crazier as he stood and angrily kicked Rosie’s lifeless body, his foot moving so fast it was nothing but a blur as he growled gibberish. For a moment, Latrice was mesmerized. He seemed to be punishing the young woman he’d just killed, enraged and wailing, kicking and kicking.
Then, still bent at the waist, he started to turn and aim the gun at Latrice.
She’d pulled from the sink a large butcher knife caked with old food. She drew her right arm back quickly, then rushed toward the old man and swung it upward, the blade projecting just above the thumb and forefinger of her closed fist. As she was swinging upward, he was turning toward her, chin jutting as he screamed at her again.
The blade met the soft underside of his jaw, pierced the flesh and stabbed upward into his mouth.
Before he was aware of what had happened to him, he raised the gun and fired at Latrice.
It clicked impotently.
Not wanting to lose her weapon, she jerked the knife out of the old man as he started to move backwards, away from her, pushed by the impact of the blade under his chin. As she withdrew the knife, his eyes bulged as he made a gurgling sound. Blood spewed from his mouth and spattered Latrice’s face, warm and clinging. She gasped and stumbled backwards so that they were suddenly falling away from each other.
Giff staggered into the room with blood running down his left arm, a large gun in his right hand. He was the color of flour and looked drained of energy. He saw Latrice first, then turned to his right and saw his father lying faceup on the floor, legs kicking as his hands slapped at his chin in a clumsy attempt to stop the blood that was spilling freely from his wound.
“Jesus Christ, Daddy!” Giff shouted as he rushed toward the old man, dropping to one knee. “What happened? Jesus, what the fuck hap—”
Then he saw Rosie. He stood up slowly as he stared down at her, then staggered toward her, croaking, “Who did this?” Standing over her, his head turned toward Latrice. “Who did this?” he shouted.
She pointed at the old man writhing on the floor. “He was gonna do the same to me, I swear. I had to defend myself.”
Eyes bulging now, Giff returned to his father’s side and bent down close, putting the barrel of his gun to the old man’s forehead.
“’Zat why you came back, you miserable old fuck?” he said. “To kill my woman? ’Zat why you disappeared for a couple weeks? Huh? So you could plan this, huh, you cocksucker?”
The old man rolled and kicked and continued to make desperate gargling sounds, spitting blood into the air, into Giff’s face.
Giff fired. The old man stopped moving and made no more sounds.
Giff stood and began to pace the length of the kitchen, breathing heavily and fast, muttering to himself incomprehensibly and occasionally making high whining sounds.
A child cried somewhere in the house.
Latrice watched Giff pace, still clutching the knife tightly in her right fist, now wet with the old man’s blood. She felt a shudder move through her and her head began to spin. She grabbed the edge of the counter with her left hand, then leaned against it as the room grew steadily darker.
Still holding the edge of the counter, she squatted down and lowered her head as much as she could. She didn’t want to lose consciousness, not here, not now, but all the blood in the room was getting to her. She took a couple of deep breaths and gulped a few times as she began to feel steady again.
When Latrice finally stood, slowly and cautiously, she found that Giff was still pacing and muttering.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said.
He stopped and looked at her, surprised, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“Really, I’m sorry,” she said again. The room became blurry and Latrice realized she was crying.
Giff looked at her with a confused frown. “Sorry? You kiddin’? I hated that fucker. Hated him!”
“Um . . . is everybody else okay? What about the kuh-kids?”
The child was still crying somewhere.
“Kids? Oh, shit. Yeah.” He immediately turned and hurried out of the kitchen, leaving Latrice there with the dead.
In the living room, he shouted, “Goddammit, Jada, will you wake the fuck up and help with the kids? Hey, Tojo! Go over to Miguel’s trailer and tell him and Mia to come in here and give us a hand. Go!”
Latrice looked around her for a moment, then down at her hands, the right one covered with blood as it held the knife. She opened her fist and let the knife fall to the floor, where the blade sang against the tiles. She had to clean up and get that blood off of her before she puked. She could smell it. She had to find a bathroom and wash in some scalding hot water and get clean. Clean. Everything would be better once she got clean.
But she couldn’t move. She leaned against the counter and just stood there, looking at nothing in particular, thinking nothing in particular, just staring, unable to take a single step. She stayed that way for what felt like a long time.
Then the small window over the sink flashed a faint red and blue, and a single, loud whoop came from the siren of a police car.
In the living room, Giff shouted, “What the fuck? Who called the fuckin’ cops?”
Latrice looked down at her bloody hand, shaking now. With blue and red flashing in her peripheral vision, she felt cold with the fear that her life was over.
36
Andy did not think he would ever stop hating himself for getting Donny into this.
How could he be so stupid? Why would he believe, without hesi
tation, that Ram von Pohle was now a great guy, a real humanitarian, a family man? Only because he wanted him to be.
Andy got the impression that Ram had reached the end of his ability to pretend to be somebody he wasn’t. Maybe it was his wife’s infidelity that had set it off, or maybe something else, but whatever it was, it had cut the ribbon on the old Ram, the Ram that Andy knew and despised and feared. That Ram was back and open for business, and he was not fucking around. No more Mr. Fake Nice Guy. He was back and worse than ever, back and in charge.
And what did Andy do? He managed to get his son trapped in the backseat of that psychopath’s patrol car. Jesus Christ, every rotten thing Jodi had said about him during the divorce was true.
He looked down at Donny, who was preoccupied with the passing scenery. Either he was quite contentedly unaware of the danger they were in, or that was his way of swallowing his fear and insecurity and burying it deep. Andy hoped the boy was as easygoing as he seemed and stayed that way. It would serve him well.
Andy felt the need to speak to Ram. He was afraid that, if left to sit there and drive silently, Ram might sink deeper into whatever insanity was pulling him down.
