"You made her into a freak." He jammed the gun under her chin.
"I didn't know," she gasped.
"She's the same age she was ten years ago. The same fucking age. She never grew up." His expression shifted as he studied her face. "She gave her your shit then kept her locked up in here for ten years. And nobody knew. Nobody. The neighbors thought she was a widow living alone. She never let her out of the house. Never."
All Laura could do was shake her head.
"She's never seen another kid." His voice cracked and tears began rolling down his face. "How did she get it?"
"She took them."
She explained how Jenny must have stolen some ampules years ago when they were at the cottage in the Adirondacks.
Ted listened and lowered the gun. "It took me a year to find her. I didn't know where they'd moved. She once said she liked the name Phoenix, so I checked the listing. For a whole year." His body slumped. "She still remembers me. Just like before I went away. She should be sixteen years old."
From inside Abigail was protesting something.
Ted put his gun inside his jacket as Jenny stepped out. She looked at him, and the grin slid off her face and her eyes instantly hardened. "I told you her next visiting hours were tomorrow, not today. Doctor's orders."
Ted looked at Laura. "She's out of her mind."
"Mommy, is that Daddy?"
"Now she heard you," Jenny snapped. "It's time to take her medicine." Then she turned to Laura. "The refills, please."
"Mommy, I want Daddy to give me my medicine. I'll show him how to do it," she shouted.
Laura fumbled in her shoulder bag for the packet of ampules.
"Please, Mommy? Daddy hasn't seen me since I was five."
"Just this once," Jenny said and opened the door. She made a face at Ted. "Make it brief," she snapped.
Abigail was propped up on her bed with her dolls and holding a hypodermic needle. "Then Daddy can tell me about the army."
Jenny led the way, and through the closed door Laura heard Abigail. "Don't cry, Daddy. It doesn't hurt at all."
Laura was trying to decide what to do when her cell phone rang.
It was Roger. The police were coming. He didn't know how they got tipped off, but his scanner had picked up a dispatch call for number 247 Farmington Road. She had to get out immediately. He'd pick her up in a minute.
Ted had called, she told herself. Yes, he had called the police to get help for Abigail.
Laura shot down the stairs and ran outside just as Roger pulled up. Roger flung open the passenger door. "Whose car is that?"
"Ted's. Roger, we have to give her the real stuff," Laura cried. It was packed in the trunks buried in the back of the van.
"Hurry up," Brett shouted. "They're right behind us."
"No. She gave it to Abigail."
Roger looked at her not knowing what she meant. "Get in!"
"She gave Elixir to Abigail. We have to give her more."
But Roger disregarded her and pulled her into the passenger seat.
They could send her a supply, she told herself as she closed the door. Yes, they'd mail some ampules from the road. Laura locked the door. The only problem was that she didn't know when her last injection had been.
They were just pulling away when from inside the house three sharp sounds rang out.
"Omigod!" Laura screamed. "Nooooo!" She started to open the door but Roger pulled her back and screeched out the drive and onto the main road. "Go back. For God's sake go back!"
Laura was still screaming as the police in several vehicles turned into Jenny's driveway and poured into her house.
"He killed them. He killed them."
Antoine lay the book on his lap and looked out the window of his Lear jet.
He was two chapters from the end, and he still could not figure out how the protagonist was going to slip the peril. That bothered him because he had always prided himself in second-guessing authors. Only Agatha Christie could throw him. This one was a close second. So far.
"Finished yet?" Vince asked.
"Another twenty pages."
"You can knock it off while they refuel."
Vince double-checked the sheets of specs downloaded from the various databases they had penetrated. He passed a copy to Antoine and the other men in the cabin.
Antoine studied the material. They had narrowed it down, but it was still not enough to pinpoint them. There was a missing element, and timing was critical.
The aircraft descended into the Atlanta airport where they would refuel for the trip to Indianapolis. The unseasonable cold front had left a blanket of snow in the northeast but, gratefully, they would not be heading that far north.
Such bizarre weather for this time of year, Antoine thought. While meteorologists pointed to La Niña, El Niño's cool sister, one religious quack went so far to proclaim that it was "the wrath of God"-the same man who claimed that Roger Glover was the "hand servant of Satan" and Elixir "the Devil's brew."
While the authorities were hot after the Glovers, they did not have the data that sat in Antoine's lap. Data that but for one detail would point to where they were heading.
He checked his watch though he knew it was about four-fifteen.
4:09. He was losing his touch. Age, he told himself. It was mucking up his internal clockwork.
The plane landed.
While the ground crews filled the tanks, Antoine sipped his wine and finished his book.
He reread the last few pages in keen delight. A very interesting twist, he thought. Ingenious, in fact. He had not seen it coming at all. Not at all, even though, of course, there were enough clues-but nothing trite like planted buttons or pipe cleaners. It was in the character of the protagonist herself. So obvious, in retrospect: The yearning for the past. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Three clicks of her heels.
Character, he told himself. And what is that, but the illustration of incident? And what is incident but the dramatization of character? Henry James, that one.
Antoine licked his lips the way he did when he got excited and picked up the phone to explain to the pilot that there was a change in plans. They would be heading northeast after all. And prepare for a descent in the snow.
34
The Glovers were about three hours into Ohio when the story came over the airwaves: a double murder and suicide that shocked the small farming town of Prairie, Indiana. Information was still scanty, and authorities were not disclosing the names of victims until notification of next of kin.
Laura snapped it off. "Next of kin," she repeated, her voice ragged from crying. "We're next of kin."
Roger said nothing. Gratefully, the hysteria was gone.
Earlier she had been so frantic to turn around that getting caught meant nothing to her. Even if she couldn't have saved them, Jenny was her sister, and Abigail was still her niece. She had to be there, she demanded. She had to be certain their bodies were cared for properly, that they would get decent funeral and burial arrangements-if for nothing else, to draw closure to the madness. Besides, they were responsible for their condition.
"Laura, if we go back, we'd be arrested." Roger had said. "We could also be implicated in their deaths."
"I should have known," she said. "He had a gun. It's why he came. I should never have left."
"He might have killed you, too, Mom," Brett added.
But Laura did not respond to him. "My family is dead," she cried. "Look what we did to them."
For miles she said nothing else but lay her head against a pillow and receded into a silent grief. Every so often she'd weep quietly.
Exhausted, Roger drove on.
More than anything else, what ate at him was what all this was doing to Brett. First, the terror of his parents wanted by every law enforcement agency in the country. Then the horror of Jenny and Abigail's murder. Adding to that was how spent Roger and Laura were. She had always been a brick and he, the voice of reason. Now they were tottering on the edge of defeat.