“Cindy, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quaking. “This craziness. I can’t take it anymore. It’s all your fault.”
“Cindy, just give me the gun, okay?”
“Stay away from me!”
He stopped in his tracks. She wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve, but she kept the gun pointed at his chest.
“Have you found your son yet?” she asked.
“What?”
“The son she gave you. She told me all about it herself.”
“When?”
“After you discovered that she’d scammed you. She called me.”
“For what?”
“She played that audiotape for me. The one of you two in bed.”
“You told me that it had come from the detectives.”
“It did. But by then I’d already heard it from the source.”
Jack winced, confused. She was starting to scare him. “Why did she play you the tape?”
“She wanted to tell me that she’d had your baby. And that you two were together again.”
“If she said that, she was lying.”
“Was she?”
Jack heard a gurgling noise behind him. Katrina was fading. “Cindy, give me the gun. We can work this out. This woman needs a doctor.”
Her voice grew louder, filled with emotion. “I don’t care what she needs, damn it! Can’t you just take ten seconds of your life and let it be about me?”
“She could die, can’t you see that?”
“She’s dying, you’re dying, we’re all dying. I’m sick of this, Jack. I swear, the only time I see love in your eyes is when I wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night or hear a strange noise outside my window and need you to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Isn’t that what you really love about me?”
“No.”
“Liar! You love it that I need you. That’s all you love. So you and your Jessie Merrill can just burn in hell together. I don’t need you anymore.”
Jack couldn’t speak. He tried to make eye contact, but it was as if she were looking right through him. She was crying, but it didn’t seem like tears of sorrow. Just an outpouring of some pent-up emotion he’d never seen before.
“Cindy,” he said in a soft, even tone. “What did you do to Jessie?”
Her expression went cold, but she said nothing.
“Cindy, talk to me.”
A calmness washed over her. Jack no longer saw tears, and her body seemed to have stopped shaking. He watched the barrel of the gun as it turned away from him.
“That’s it. Give me the gun.”
It kept moving, first to one side, then up. Farther up. She glanced at Yuri’s body on the floor, then spoke in an empty voice. “It’s like the man said: We all determine our own fate.”
Jack watched in horror as she took aim at her own temple.
“No!” he cried as he lunged toward her. He fell with his full weight against her, taking her down, grabbing for the gun, trying to avert one more senseless tragedy. Somewhere in the tumble he felt her hand jerk forward.
The next thing he heard was the sickening, muffled sound of one final bullet blasting from the silencer.
67
•
Jack had a view of the restrooms from his seat in the hospital waiting room. Cindy’s mother was off to his left, several rows of seats separating them. Over the course of two hours, they’d made eye contact once. He’d just happened to look up and caught her shooting death rays in his direction.
A little after eleven o’clock, the doctor came out to see them. “Mr. Swyteck?”
Evelyn jumped from her seat and came between them. “I’m Cindy’s mother.”
“I’m Dr. Blanco. The good news is your daughter-your wife-is going to be just fine. She dodged a bullet. Literally. It scorched a path right past her ear. Right down to the skull. Still, it’s in the superficial category.”
Jack asked, “What about Katrina, the woman who came in the same ambulance? How’s she?”
“She’s in recovery. Lost a lot of blood, but she made it here in time. I’d expect a full recovery. Probably a couple months of rehab on the shoulder.”
“Can we talk about my daughter, please?” said Evelyn. “When can she come home?”
“That’s a little problematic. With any self-inflicted wound, we don’t want to rush these things. Before I make any promises, I want to get a psychiatric evaluation.”
“That seems wise,” said Jack.
“Psychiatric?” said Evelyn. “She’s not a-I mean, she’s a bright girl. She’s just been under so much stress.”
“Stress may be part of it. But let’s get a professional to take a look at the whole picture. Then we can make a judgment.”
“When can I see her?”
“That’s something our psychiatrist should determine. You can wait here, if you like. I’ll send someone down from psych just as soon as I can.” He offered a polite smile, shook their hands, and was on his way.
Jack returned to his seat. Evelyn started toward hers, then stopped and turned back. She took the seat across from Jack but said nothing. She just stared.
“I’m sorry for all this, Evelyn.”
“You should be.”
“No need to beat me up. I’ll be beating myself up over this for a long time. It’s so obvious to me now.”
“What’s so obvious?”
“Cindy and Jessie. There’s no good reason for Jessie’s body to have been found in my own house. Unless Cindy killed her.”
“Do you honestly believe that Cindy is capable of murder?”
“No. But the little things are starting to add up now. I remember one of the first nights we spent in your house. Cindy was all upset because she found out she wasn’t pregnant. We started talking about fertility, and she was so certain that the problem was with her, not me. Neither one of us had been tested. How would she have known it was her, unless Jessie had told her…” He stopped himself, suddenly uncomfortable about having this conversation with his mother-in-law.
“Told her that you had already fathered a child?”
“All I’m saying is, I just can’t believe it.”
“Then don’t believe it. Look, Jessie may have died in your house, but Cindy wasn’t even home when it happened. She was with me that whole day.”
“Nice try, Evelyn. But you’re not the first parent to concoct an alibi for her child.”
“You listen to me, smart guy. Cindy’s not well to begin with. That man Yuri knocked her out with some kind of drug and then put a gun to her head. How coherent would you be after all that? You can’t take anything she said this morning at face value.”
The elevator doors opened, and a woman stepped out. Jack caught her eye, and she walked toward him. Jack hadn’t seen her in a while, but it seemed that the older Cindy and her sister got, the more they looked alike.
“Hello, Celeste,” said Jack.
“Thanks for calling me. How’s Cindy?”
“She’s going to be fine.”
Evelyn turned and walked away, saying nothing to her older daughter. If there was ice between her and Jack, she and Celeste were glaciers apart. Jack had never fully understood it, just accepted it as part of a strange family dynamic.
He escorted Celeste to the vending machine, well away from Evelyn, then took a few minutes to explain everything over a cold soda. He glanced toward the in-take desk and saw Evelyn talking with another doctor, presumably the psychiatrist.
“Excuse me one second.” He quickly crossed the waiting room and introduced himself to the doctor. As Jack had figured, she was from psych.
“As I was telling your mother-in-law, I will probably want to keep Cindy in the hospital at least overnight, mostly for observation.”
“That’s fine.”
“If she does become violent or show some signs that she might injure herself, we may need to sedate or even restrain her. I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but to be on the safe side, I’d like your written authorization to do that.”