“You wouldn’t even be—” Nick stopped and frowned, then said, as though suddenly seeing the answer to some riddle, “You’re waiting.”
“That’s right,” Parker said, and flipped the mat off his legs.
Nick clenched, the gun now pointing at Parker’s eyes, trembling only a little. “Don’t move!”
“I’m not moving, Nick. I got stiff, that’s all, sleeping here.”
“You could get stiffer.”
“I know that, Nick.” He’s getting ready to shoot, Parker told himself. There’s nothing more he’s going to get from talking and he knows it. And he doesn’t dare let me live.
“Parker...” Nick said, and trailed off, sounding almost regretful.
“We could help each other, Nick,” Parker said. “Better for both of us. And I got water,” he said, holding the bottle up in his left hand. “To keep me going till my ride gets here. It’s just water. Check it out for yourself,” he said, and slowly lobbed the bottle underhand, in an arc toward Nick’s lap.
Nick looked at the bottle rising and falling through the air and Parker’s right hand grabbed up a corner of the mat. He snapped the mat around at Nick’s head, and his body lunged after it.
The bullet first went through the quilted mat.
Two
1
One week earlier, just two days after the big armored-car robbery, Dr. Myron Madchen’s week of horror began in earnest, and just when he’d thought his near-connection to the affair was buried and gone as though it had never been.
In a way, it had never been. He had not after all provided an alibi for one of the robbers, and he had not shared in the proceeds of the robbery. In fact, when the time finally came, he had had nothing to do with the matter. Everything had resolved itself with no action from him, and he was home free. Or so he’d thought.
That Sunday evening, two days after the robbery, he and Isabelle shared a fine dinner in a roadside restaurant called the Wayward Inn, where they cemented their plans for the future. A little patience was all they’d need. After all, the doctor was now a recent and unexpected widower, and it would be unseemly if he and Isabelle were publicly to make much of one another so soon.
So they’d driven to the Wayward Inn in separate cars, dined together, laughed together, gazed into each other’s eyes, and parted with a chaste kiss in the parking lot. All the way home the doctor, a heavyset man in his fifties with thick iron-gray hair combed straight back and large eyeglasses, sang at the wheel, loud and off-key, a thing he’d never done before.
His house when he entered it seemed larger than before, and warmer. Also, it was empty, since he’d given Estrella a week off, with pay, feeling he’d rather be unobserved until he became more familiar with the new situation.
He’d forgotten to turn lights on when he’d gone out this evening. It hadn’t been dark yet, and he wasn’t used to the house being empty in his absence. Now he wanted light, all the light there was, and he went through the large house room by room, switching on lamps and track lighting and wall sconces and chandeliers everywhere, until he reached the small room off his bedroom, laughably known as his office — he’d be moving now to a larger space — and when he pushed the button for the ceiling light the voice in the corner said, “Turn that off.”
He very nearly fainted. He clutched to the doorjamb so he wouldn’t fall over, and stared at the robber.
One of the robbers, the one who’d been caught and then escaped, one of the two who’d threatened him last week when they were afraid he’d let something slip about their plans for the robbery. Which he was never going to do, never; it was important to him, too, or it had seemed vitally important before Ellen... had her heart attack.
“Off.”
“Oh! Yes!”
He’d been staring at the man, not even listening to what he’d said, but now he hit the button again and the room went back to semidarkness. The light from the bedroom behind him still showed his desk and chair, his filing cabinet, his framed degrees and awards, and in the darkest corner that hunched man in Dr. Madchen’s black leather reading chair, just watching him.
“What—” He shook his head, and started again: “You can’t be here.”
“I can’t be anywhere else,” the man said. Dalesia; the television news had said his name was Dalesia.
“You can’t be here.”
“Well, let’s look at that, Doctor,” Dalesia said. He was tense but in control, a hard and capable man. He said, “Why don’t you go over and sit at your desk there, swivel the chair around to face me. Go ahead, do it.”
So the doctor did it, and then, in a low and trembling voice, said, “I can’t let anybody even know I know you.”
“If I leave here, Doctor,” Dalesia said, “I’m gonna be sore. I’m gonna be sore at you. And then, in a couple hours, a couple days, when the cops get me again, guess who I’m gonna talk about.”
The doctor felt as though invisible straps were clamping every part of his body. He sat tilted forward, feet together and heels lifted, knees together, hands folded into his lap as though he were trying to hide a baseball. Slowly blinking at Dalesia, he said, “Talk about me? What could you say about me? I didn’t do anything.”
“You killed your wife.”
The doctor’s mouth popped open, but at first all he did was expel a little puff of air. But then, needing to have that accusation unsaid, never said, he protested, “That’s— Nobody’s even suggested such a thing.”
“I will.”
The doctor shook his head, still feeling those invisible bonds. “Why would anybody believe you?”
“They didn’t do an autopsy, did they?”
“Of course not. No need.”
“I’ll give them the need.” Dalesia was much more comfortable in this room than the doctor was. “If I stay here until the heat dies down,” he said, “your wife had a heart attack. If I leave, you stuck her with a hypodermic needle.”
“They won’t believe you,” the doctor insisted. “There’s no reason to believe you.”
“Doctor,” Dalesia said, “we had our very first meeting about the robbery in your office. Your nurse and your receptionist saw me. You told us the money you’d get from us was your last chance, you were desperate, you had serious trouble.” He shrugged. “Wife trouble, I guess.”
“I was going to run away.”
“Now you don’t have to.”
The doctor’s mind filled with regrets, that he had ever involved himself with these people, but then regrets for the past were overwhelmed by horror of the present. What could he do? He couldn’t force the man to leave, Dalesia really would take his revenge. Let him stay, and somehow find a way to stick him with a hypodermic needle? But Dalesia was tough and hard, he’d never give Dr. Madchen the opportunity. So what could he do?
Dalesia said, “There’s a little bedroom downstairs, by the kitchen. Whose is that?”
“What? Oh, Estrella.”
“Who’s that, your daughter?”
“No, the maid, she’s our maid.”
“Where is she?”
“With her family in New Jersey. I gave her the week off.”
“Well, that’s good, then,” Dalesia said. “I’ll stay down there. I’ll take off before this Estrella gets back, take your car, and that’s the end of it.”
“Oh, no,” the doctor said. “You can’t take my car!”
“I gotta have wheels.”
“But you can’t take my car.”
“Why not? You report it stolen.”