“Jill! Your mommy will be dead if you don’t come down here right now!”
No choice. Jill ran up the stairs. She thought about the anonymous e-mail she’d sent to Mr. Novak just earlier today:
Please listen to me. You need to hide your gun better.
She prayed that he hadn’t read it or if he had, that he hadn’t had time to do anything about it. Jill dived into his bedroom and pulled the drawer all the way out. She dumped the contents on the floor.
The gun was gone.
Her heart fell. She heard screaming coming from downstairs. The man could be killing them all. She started tossing his things around when her hand hit something metallic.
The gun.
“Jill! Last chance!”
How did she get rid of the safety? Damn it. She didn’t know. But then Jill remembered something.
Yasmin had never put it back on. The safety was probably still off.
Yasmin screamed.
Jill scrambled back to her feet. She wasn’t even down the stairs when she called out in the littlest, baby-est voice she could muster: “Please don’t hurt my mommy.”
She hurried down to the basement level. She wondered if she would be able to apply enough pressure to make the gun fire. She figured that she’d hold the gun with both hands and use two fingers.
Turns out, that was pressure enough.
NASH heard the sirens.
He saw the gun and smiled. Part of him wanted to make a leap, but Cassandra shook her head. He didn’t want that either. The girl hesitated. So he moved a little closer to her and raised the knife over her head.
When Nash was ten, he asked his father what happens to us when we die. His father said that Shakespeare probably said it best, that death was “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”
In sum, how can we know?
The first bullet hit him square in the chest.
He staggered closer to her, keeping the knife raised, waiting.
Nash didn’t know where the second bullet would take him, but he hoped it would be to Cassandra.
40
MIKE sat in the same interrogation room as before. This time he was with his son.
Special Agent Darryl LeCrue and U.S. Assistant Attorney Scott Duncan had been trying to put together the case. Mike knew that they were all here somewhere-Rosemary, Carson, DJ Huff and probably his father, the other goths. They separated them out, hoping to cut deals and file charges.
They’d been here for hours. Mike and Adam had yet to answer a single question. Hester Crimstein, their attorney, refused to let them speak. Right now Mike and Adam sat alone in the interrogation room.
Mike looked at his son, felt his heart break, and said, “It’s going to be okay,” for maybe the fifth or sixth time.
Adam had gone nonresponsive. Shock probably. Of course, there was a fine line between shock and teenage sullenness. Hester was in crazed mode and it was getting worse. You could see it. She kept bouncing in and out and asking questions. Adam just shook his head when she demanded details.
Her last visit had been half an hour ago and ended with her saying two words to Mike: “Not good.”
The door burst open again now. Hester walked in, grabbed a chair, pulled it close to Adam. She sat down and moved her face an inch away from his. He turned away. She took his face in her hands, turned it toward hers, and said, “Look at me, Adam.”
He did so with great reluctance.
“Here is your problem. Rosemary and Carson are blaming you. They say it was your idea to steal your father’s prescription pads and take this to the next level. They say you sought them out. Depending on their mood, they also claim that your father was behind it too. Daddy here was looking for a way to pick up extra cash. The DEA officers in this very building just got themselves wonderful ink for arresting a doctor in Bloomfield for doing the same thing-providing illegal prescriptions for the black market. So they like that angle, Adam. They want the doctor and his son in cahoots because it makes a media splash and gets them promotions. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Adam nodded.
“So why aren’t you telling me the truth?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Adam said.
She spread her hands. “What does that mean?”
He just shook his head. “It’s my word against theirs.”
“Right, but see, there’s two problems. First off, it’s not just them. They got a couple of Carson ’s buddies to back up their story. Of course these buddies would back up the claim that you performed anal probes on a spaceship if Carson and Rosemary asked them to. So that’s not our big problem.”
Mike said, “So what is?”
“The firmest piece of evidence is those prescription pads. You can’t tie them directly to Rosemary and Carson. It’s not a nice neat package. But they can tie them directly to you, Dr. Baye. Obviously. They are yours. They can also pretty much tie how they got from point A-you, Dr. Baye-to point B-the illegal market. Via your son.”
Adam closed his eyes and shook his head.
“What?” Hester said.
“You won’t believe me.”
“Sweetheart, listen to me. It’s not my job to believe you. It’s my job to defend you. You can worry about your mommy believing you, okay? I’m not your mommy. I’m your attorney and, right now, that’s a whole lot better.”
Adam looked at his father.
“I will believe you,” Mike said.
“But you didn’t trust me.”
Mike was not sure how to reply to that.
“You put that thing on my computer. You eavesdropped on my private conversations.”
“We were worried about you.”
“You could have asked.”
“I did, Adam. I asked a thousand times. You told me to leave you alone. You told me to get out of your room.”
“Uh, fellas?” It was Hester. “I’m enjoying this touching father-son scene, really, it’s beautiful, I want to weep, but I bill by the hour and I’m damn expensive, so can we get back to this case?”
There was a sharp knock on the door. It opened and Special Agent Darryl LeCrue and U.S. Assistant Attorney Scott Duncan entered.
Hester said, “Get out. This is a private conference.”
“There is someone here who wants to see your clients,” LeCrue said.
“I don’t care if it’s Jessica Alba in a tube top-”
“Hester?”
It was LeCrue.
“Trust me here. This is important.”
They stepped to the side. Mike looked up. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but certainly not this. Adam started to cry as soon as he saw them.
Betsy and Ron Hill stepped into the room.
“Who the hell are they?” Hester asked.
“Spencer’s parents,” Mike said.
“Whoa, what kind of emotional trick is this? I want them out. I want them out now.”
LeCrue said, “Shh. Just listen. Don’t talk. Just listen.”
Hester turned to Adam. She put his hand on his forearm. “Don’t say one word. Do you hear me? Not one word.”
Adam just kept crying.
Betsy Hill took a seat across the table from him. There were tears in her eyes too. Ron stood behind her. He crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling. Mike could see the tremble in his lips. LeCrue stood back in one corner, Duncan the other.
LeCrue said, “Mrs. Hill, can you tell them what you just told us?” Hester Crimstein still had her hand on Adam’s forearm, readying to quiet him. Betsy Hill just looked at Adam. Adam finally lifted his head. He met her eyes.
“What’s going on?” Mike asked.
Betsy Hill finally spoke. “You lied to me, Adam.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Hester said. “If she’s going to start with accusations about deception, we’re going to stop this right here and right now.”
Betsy kept her eyes on Adam, ignoring the outburst. “You and Spencer didn’t fight over a girl, did you?”
Adam said nothing.
“Did you?”
“Don’t answer,” Hester said, giving his forearm a little squeeze.
“We are not commenting on any alleged fight-”