Jim Cochran regarded his friend shrewdly. “I don’t believe I told you why they didn’t come.”
“You told me,” Marsh replied with a tight smile. “Maybe not in words, but I understood.” He glanced back over his shoulder to the living room, where Ellen was still sitting on the couch. “I’d better get back in,” he went on. “I don’t think she can stand to be by herself very long.”
During the hour that Jim Cochran had been there, Ellen had finally begun to speak, but she was still confused, as if she wasn’t exactly sure what had happened.
“Where’s Carol?” she had asked half an hour ago. Then she’d peered vacantly around the room.
“She’s home,” Jim had told her. “Home with the girls. Kim’s not feeling too well.”
“Oh,” Ellen had breathed, then fallen silent again before repeating her question five minutes later.
“She’ll be all right,” Marsh had assured him. “It’s a kind of shock, and she’ll pull out of it.”
But even as he was about to leave, Jim wasn’t sure he should be going at all. To him, Marsh didn’t look much better than Ellen.
“Maybe I’d better stay—”
“No. If Alex comes home, I don’t know what might happen. But I know I’d rather nobody was here. Except them.” He gestured past the patio wall and up the road in the direction of the car Jim knew was still parked there, waiting.
“Okay. But if you need me, call me. All right?”
“All right.” And then, without saying anything more, Marsh closed the door.
Jim Cochran crossed the patio, and let himself out through the gate. As he got into his car, he waved toward the two policemen, and one of them waved back. Finally he started the engine, put the car in gear, and backed out into the street.
Thirty seconds later, as he neared the bottom of the hill, he passed another car going up, but it was too dark for him to see Alex Lonsdale behind its wheel.
Alex pulled the car off the road just before he rounded the last curve. By now, he was sure, they would be looking for him, and they would be watching the house. He checked the breech of the shotgun.
There was one shell left.
It would be all he needed.
He got out of the car and quietly shut the door, then left the road and worked his way up the hillside, circling around to approach the house from the rear. In the dim light of the moon, the old house looked as it had so many years ago, and deep in his memory, the voices — Alejandro’s voices — began whispering to him once more.
He crept down the slope into the shadows of the house itself, and a moment later had scaled the wall and dropped into the patio.
He stood at the front door.
He hesitated, then twisted the handle and pushed the door open. Twenty feet away, in the living room, he saw his father.
Not his father.
Alex Lonsdale’s father.
Alex Lonsdale was dead.
But Ellen Lonsdale was still alive.
“Venganza … venganza …”
Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz was dead, as was Raymond Torres.
And yet, they weren’t. They were alive, in Alex Lonsdale’s body, and the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s brain.
Alex’s father was staring at him.
“Alex?”
He heard the name, as he’d heard it at the Cochrans’ such a short time ago. But it wasn’t his name.
“No. Not Alex,” he whispered. “Someone else.”
He raised the shotgun, and began walking slowly into the living room, where the last of the four women — Alex’s mother — sat on the sofa, staring at him in terror.
Roscoe Finnerty’s entire body twitched, and his eyes jerked open. For just a second he felt disoriented, then his mind focused, and he turned to his partner. “What’s going on?”
“Nothin’,” Jackson replied. “Cochran took off a few minutes ago, and since then, nothing.”
“Unh-unh,” Finnerty growled. “Something woke me up.”
Jackson lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch, but he straightened himself in the seat, lit another cigarette, and scanned the scene on Hacienda Drive. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed.
Still, he’d long since learned that Finnerty sometimes had a sixth sense about things.
And then he remembered.
A few minutes ago, there’d been a glow, as if a car had been coming up the hill, but it had stopped before coming around the last curve.
He’d assumed it had been a neighbor coming home.
“God damn!” he said aloud. He told his partner what had happened, and Finnerty cursed softly, then opened the car door.
“Come on. Let’s take a look.”
Both the officers got out of the car and started down the street.
Ellen’s eyes focused slowly on Alex. It was like a dream, and she was only able to see little bits at a time.
The blood on his forehead, crusting over a deep gash that almost reached his eye.
The eyes themselves, staring at her unblinkingly, empty of all emotion except one.
Deep in his eyes, she thought she could see a smoldering spark of hatred.
The shotgun. Its barrels were enormous — black holes as empty as Alex’s eyes — and they seemed to be staring at her with the same hatred as Alex.
Suddenly Ellen Lonsdale knew she was not looking at her son.
She was looking at someone else, someone who was going to kill her.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why?”
Then, as if her senses were turning on one by one, she heard her husband’s voice.
“What is it, Alex? What’s wrong?”
“Venganza …” she heard Alex whisper.
“Vengeance?” Marsh asked. “Vengeance for what?”
“Ladrones … asesinos …”
“No, Alex,” Marsh said softly. “You’ve got it wrong.” Wildly Marsh searched his mind for something to say, something that would get through to Alex.
Except it wasn’t Alex. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Alex.
Where the hell were the cops?
And then the front door flew open, and Finnerty and Jackson were in the entry hall.
Alex’s head swung around toward the foyer, and Marsh used the moment. Lunging forward, he grasped the shotgun by the barrel, then threw himself sideways, twisting the gun out of Alex’s hands. The force of his weight knocked Alex off balance, and he staggered toward the fireplace, then caught himself on the mantel. A moment later, his eyes met Marsh’s.
“Do it,” he whispered. “If you loved your son, do it.”
Marsh hesitated. “Who are you?” he asked, his voice choking on the words. “Are you Alex?”
“No. I’m someone else. I’m whoever I was programmed to be, and I’ll do what I was programmed to do. Alex tried to stop me, but he can’t. Do it … Father. Please do it for me.”
Marsh raised the gun, and as Ellen and the two policemen looked on, he squeezed the trigger.
The gun roared once more, and Alex’s body, torn and bleeding, collapsed slowly onto the hearth.
Time stood still.
Ellen’s eyes fixed on the body that lay in front of the fireplace, but what she saw was not her son.
It was someone else — someone she had never known — who had lived in her home for a while, and whom she had tried to love, tried to reach. But whoever he was, he was too far away from her, and she had not been able to reach him.
And he was not Alex.
She turned and faced Marsh.
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she rose and went to hold her husband.
One arm still cradling the shotgun, the other around his wife, Marsh finally tore his eyes away from the body of his son and faced the two policemen who stood as if frozen just inside the front door. “I … I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I had to …” He seemed about to say something else, but didn’t. Instead, he let the gun fall to the floor, and held Ellen close. “I just had to, that’s all.”