The Last Day (27 page)

“Bullshit. You're suing the people who killed your son,” Evelyn said. “That's revenge, just so you'll get hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“The people responsible for killing Barney
should pay for their mistake, but that money is going to the hospital in our son's name so something good can come out of our loss. We want to honor Barney's memory long after we're gone. You'll kill us and we'll be together with our Barney. What will Gizmo's life have counted for?”

“I'm going to gut you like a fish,” Louis said evenly. “While Natasha watches.”

“I suppose you can't believe in life after death,” Ward continued. “We do. If there's life after death, maybe Gizmo is watching you. He must be proud of his parents.”

“You're using bullshit psychology on us,” Louis said. “It won't work. Trying to divide us against each other. It's good, Ward, but she loves me. She loved Gizmo.”

“She's scared shitless of you,” Ward continued. “She's doing this because she knows that until we're gone, she's safe. Slipping that disk into my computer, getting close to feed you information on us. Doing her part while you snuck in and drugged me at home, and screwed with our heads. Once that's over, she knows you'll only have her left to punish.

“You're going to get caught,” Ward said,
finally. “You'll see. And you're going to hell, and you won't ever see your son again because he won't be there.”

“Enough of this bullshit,” Louis said. He flinched and closed his eyes tight for a second.

Evelyn looked at her husband and back at Ward. Ward had gotten to her, but how much good that would do was impossible to gauge.

“Shoot the kid,” Louis said, opening his eyes. He put down the blade, grabbed up the gun and held it out to Evelyn, butt first. She looked at it, bewildered.

“What?” she asked.

“Shoot the toad,” he repeated. “You hate the bitch and she has to die. Or do you want me to do all the work myself?”

Evelyn's eyes reflected horror. “Me shoot her?”

“Take this, go over there, and put the fucking gun to her forehead and blow her brains out. Do it now!”

“I … can't do it,” she said, her eyes darting around the room.

“You've never killed anybody,” Ward said. “He wants the satisfaction of seeing you be like him.”

Louis flipped the weapon in his left hand to grip it. “You can't? You can't? Yes, you can, and you will!”

“She didn't do anything,” Evelyn protested.

“Did the boys in Lindley's cabin? Did you ever say, ‘They didn't do anything’? No, you said it was a good thing. Alice is an annoying little thief. And she's a witness. Do you want me to let her go so we can watch her testify against us?”

“You can do it,” Evelyn said. “You know how.”

“I taught you to shoot. But you don't mind if I kill her?” he asked.

Evelyn nodded. “Please.”

Louis aimed the gun at Alice, who pressed herself against Natasha, and squeezed the bag tighter to her chest.

Natasha held her tight, protectively. “Alice never even heard of Gizmo until she came here and we told her. She's as innocent as Gizmo was.”

“Collateral damage,” Louis said.

“Like those teenage boys at the lake,” Ward said. “Like Trey. You killed Trey, didn't you? And that hacker you hired. And Thumper?”

“Yes, I did. Now shut the fuck up.” He turned
to his wife. “Are you going to take this gun and shoot her?” he demanded.

“No,” Evelyn said. “I won't do it. I can't, Louis.”

Louis winced, opened his eyes, and seemed to be weighing something for several seconds.

“I let you live in the trailer, because you promised you'd do whatever it took to help me pay back the bastards who killed Gizmo. Against my better judgment, I didn't use the torch on you, didn't fill you with spray foam. This is my reward?”

“You know I love you, Louis. I've proved that. But I can't and I—”

As she spoke, Louis turned the muzzle from Alice and fired. The bullet passed through the base of Evelyn's neck, ending her words, and punched a large hole in the window behind her. The thick double panes of glass around the hole formed a spiderweb of tiny cracks around it.

Evelyn looked at Louis, bewildered, and collapsed. Natasha screamed out, and Louis stood, aiming the gun at her.

“You bastard!” Ward yelled.

Louis waved the gun. “I ask her to do one little
thing and she refuses. In all this time she's never done anything but sit back and keep her hands clean. She never loved Gizmo. She never loved anybody but herself. Totally selfish.”

“Let me help her,” Natasha demanded, straightening.

“She's beyond help,” Louis said, unloading the gun and putting it back down on the table. “I think we should get this finished.”

He picked up his knife and came into the den with blood streaming down his arm, dripping off his fingers.

Ward sprang from the chair and grabbed the poker. He raised it up like a major league batter and moved toward Louis. Blood dripped rapidly to the stone floor, the rug. Crouching, Louis held the knife in his left hand. Except for his hair, his bright teeth, and steel-blue eyes, the coating of ash totally obscured his features.

Louis pounced like a cat and was on Ward so fast he didn't have time to swing the poker. The knife passed through Ward's left shoulder, striking the bone as it went through the tissue.

Louis sprang back, balancing and waving the blade in a figure eight. Ward swung the poker, missing by a foot.

Natasha lunged from the couch and jumped on Louis's back, wrapping her arms around his neck and applying pressure.

Without so much as swaying, Louis snapped his head back and connected with Natasha's forehead, with a sound like a hammer striking a coconut. She collapsed behind him in a heap.

Despite the weakness in his shoulder, Ward raised the poker and swung again, stepping into the blow to close with Louis. Louis seemed to vanish as he ducked the poker's wide arc, moved in, and swung his blade, opening Ward's shirt and releasing a gout of blood through the sliced fabric. Ward dropped the poker as he fell backward against the fireplace. His right arm on the stone mantel for balance, Ward felt the prototype against his hand and gripped it.

Meeting Louis's eyes, and drawing strength from the victorious smile on the killer's lips, he mustered all of his strength and threw the car as hard as he could.

When the prototype hit Louis an edge found a bright blue eye.

Louis bent and cursed, putting the back of his knife hand against the damaged eye for a second
before he looked back up at Ward with a bloody, orbless socket.

Ward was aware of Louis lunging, and he felt a new pressure high in his chest as the blade entered.

Ward, no longer able to stand, slid down the front of the fireplace.

Louis looked at Ward and fixed him with one-eyed unbridled rage. The knife in his hand flipped to change position, the back edge of the blade resting against his forearm, preparing to finish his opponent.

Ward put his hands reflexively to his stomach, and felt something warm and substantial, and knew he was holding in part of his intestines. He could feel hot blood running down across his groin and he couldn't catch his breath.

Louis looked at Ward's wound, and said, “Don't die yet.”

Louis turned.

On the couch, Alice had drawn her legs up, holding her knees, the tote bag trapped against her. Ward couldn't hear the screams, just the odd sound of wind, like a hurricane, rushing through his mind.

Below Louis, a stunned Natasha raised herself
up on one arm. Louis grabbed her hair with his bloody right hand, and looked at Ward, who was trying in vain to get to his feet.

“Watch,” Louis hollered, placing the blade pointing down at the base of her neck just behind her collarbone.

“No!” Ward yelled, his eyes locking on his wife's. They were wide open in terror, but as he watched they closed once, then opened and she smiled weakly at him. Her final expression was one of acceptance, and sadness, but there was no fear there.

And behind Natasha he saw Alice looking into her tote like a woman searching for a tube of lipstick.

“This is for Gizmo,” Louis said.

Ward was aware of the first notes of Louis's laughter.

He saw the muscles in Louis's arm tighten, but Ward managed to lunge and grab the end of the blade with his right hand, squeezing as hard as he could.

Ward felt the pressure of the blade biting into the meat and tissue, wedging into bone as Louis pushed down.

Ward looked up and met Louis's amused gaze.

He felt the blade moving down, the tip penetrating Natasha's neck, and he squeezed harder. The knife seemed to rise for an instant. Ward pulled the blade toward him. Louis gritted his teeth and snarled as he muscled the blade back to Natasha's neck.

Ward was blinded by a bright flash, and an aura around Louis's form. The killer's features evaporated. Louis released the knife. As Louis/Todd fell sideways, Ward saw a small gun in Alice's hand, a thin plume of smoke rising from its barrel.

Ward raised his hand and saw that the knife was still there, wedged fast, covered in his own blood.

Washed with a feeling of well- being as he fell backward, Ward was filled with the sensation of floating, and he realized that, even though he hadn't felt himself connecting with the floor, he was on his back looking up at the light fixture.

Sound faded, and Ward's head was filled with a continuous dull tone like that of a struck gong. As he stared at the dimming ceiling, Natasha
suddenly loomed over him, a thin line on her neck oozing blood in a wide ribbon. She was crying and he could feel the pressure of her hands, first on his cheeks, and then on his violated abdomen.

He couldn't hear what she was saying, because just over her left shoulder he saw a golden circle growing, and from within it, Barney's smiling face.

Barney's hands seemed to reach through his mother's shoulder, and Ward's hands rose to take them. The child's hands were as warm and real as they had been before he died. Ward's own hands were now bloodless, the right one undamaged as Barney pulled his father up from where he was lying.

As Ward rose, he turned his head to look down on Natasha's back, her head turned down over a body he recognized as his own. The physical Ward McCarty was splayed on the floor beneath her, seemingly floating in a rapidly expanding pool of blood that looked like black water.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

Natasha stared into her husband's open eyes through a veil of warm tears. His pupils were fixed and dilated.

“Oh, Ward, don't leave me,” she called, cradling his bloodred face between her wet hands.

“Is he dead?” Alice asked.

Natasha eased Ward's head down and began giving him chest compressions. After a dozen, she put her fingers to his throat and felt a faint pulse, then nothing.

“No, he's still alive.”

Natsaha gathered her thoughts. “Alice, on top of the refrigerator—bring me the black case!”

Alice tossed the gun to the couch cushions, ran, and returned in seconds with the case in her hands. Natasha opened it with bloody hands and turned on the defibrillator, purchased after her son's death.

“Now, look under the sink and get the trash bags. In the utility room there's a roll of duct tape in the cabinet over the washing machine.
Bring those to me,” Natasha ordered in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Can you do that?”

“Sure I can,” Alice said, rushing from the room.

Natasha felt the blood flowing freely from Ward's open wounds, but she had to get his heart beating, and it might, at least until he had lost so much blood that his heart was starved.

“Oh, Ward, please stay with me. Please don't leave me.”

SEVENTY-NINE

Alice found the garbage bags and rushed to the utility room. In the collection of tools in the cabinet over the washing machine, there was a large roll of gray tape, which she grabbed up and carried from the room.

When she turned the corner she ran headlong into a solid mass holding a gun. It grabbed her with its free hand.

Alice screamed.

From the den, Natasha yelled, “Alice!”

“FBI,” the man yelled.

“Get the fuck out of the way,” Alice hollered, struggling to break away.

The man released her and she ran back to the den, jumping over the body of Evelyn Gismano and handing the bags and tape to Natasha, who had pulled Ward's wet shirt up over his chest. Agent Mayes rushed into the room behind her, then froze in place as he took in the scene. Before he did anything to help, he moved from Evelyn to Louis Gismano, checking each for a pulse. Natasha glanced up and noted his presence with relief.

Taking a plastic bag, Natasha laid it over the open wound and said, “Agent Mayes, grip him under his shoulders and lift him up for me.”

The FBI man put his gun in its holster, and did what Natasha told him to do.

Alice stood back as the man and Natasha raised Ward's torso, and she watched as Natasha pressed his guts into the cavity, placed the trash bag around her husband's stomach, took the roll of tape, and, with difficulty, secured the bag in place.

“There's no cell signal,” Agent Mayes told her. “And the driveway is blocked.”

“We have to get him to the emergency room,” she said. “We can't wait for EMS or he'll bleed out.”

“My car is up the driveway.”

“Can you carry him?” Natasha asked.

Mayes knelt, picked Ward McCarty up from the floor, and carried him. Passing the front door he began to run, with Alice and Natasha at his side. Natasha had the defibrillator case under her arm.

“Stay with us, Ward,” the FBI agent said.

The man put Ward in the rear of his car, then ran around and pulled him completely inside.

Natasha climbed in the backseat and kneeled on the floorboard. The agent slammed the doors and, as Alice Palmer climbed into the passenger seat, he placed a blue light on the dashboard, flipped it on, and roared out in reverse, turning the heavy sedan out onto the road. He jerked the shifter down and peeled rubber heading down the highway. A mile down the road, he picked up his phone and dialed 911 without looking.