By the time I reached him, there was no movement. I took his arm, held it up. I checked, but he had no pulse. I checked it again - nothing, nothing but the silence of the woods, and the awful cold.
Michael Bell was dead, and so was Mary Smith. And very soon, in these freezing wet clothes, I would be, too.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 119
MY SLOW CLIMB UP and out of the gully from the crash site was hellish, nothing but excruciating pain, dizziness, and nausea. The only blessing was that I barely remembered any of it.
Somehow, I managed to get out to the main road - where an alarmed college student in a Subaru picked me up. I never even got his name. I guess I passed out in the backseat of his cat By the next morning, Michael Bell's body had been recovered from the stream, and I was resting in a bed at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. Resting is probably the wrong word, though. Local police came and went from my room continually I spent hours on the phone with my office in Washington, the L.A. Bureau office, and Jeanne Galletta, trying to piece together everything that had happened from the start of the murder spree.
Bell's plan had been a feat of convolution and madness, but his cover was ultimately simple - diversion. And he'd succeeded until the very end. As Jeanne pointed out to me, Michael Bell wrote and produced stories for a living. Plot was his thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this one ended up as a screenplay, written by someone else. The writer would probably change everything, though, until the movie carried the fishy title “based on a true story”
“Who's going to play you?” Jeanne kidded me over the phone.
“I don't know. I don't much care. Pee-wee Herman.”
As for Mary Constantine, I wasn't sure how to feel about her. The cop in me had one response, but the shrink had another. I was glad she'd be getting back into the kind of treatment and care she needed. If Dr. Shapiro was right, maybe Mary was ultimately headed toward some kind of recovery. That was how I wanted to think about it for right now Around four o'clock, the door to my room creaked open, and none other than Nana Mama poked her head inside.
“There's a sight for bed-sore eyes,” I said, and started to grin. “Hello, Nana. What brings you to Vermont?”
“Maple syrup,” she cracked.
She came in timidly, especially for her, and winced when she saw the truss around my shoulder.
“Oh, Alex, Alex.”
“Looks worse than it is. Well, maybe not,” I said. “Did you have any trouble getting a flight?”
“No trouble at all. You go to the airport. You pay money”
She reached out to put a cool hand on my cheek. It felt familiar and so comforting. What would I do without this ornery old woman? I couldn't help thinking. What will I do?
“They said you're going to be fine, Alex. I suppose that's a relative concept, though, isn't it?”
I'd been shot before. It's traumatic - there's no way around that - but not irreversible, at least not so fat “I'll be fine,” I told Nana. “Body and soul.”
“I told the children to wait outside. I want to say something to you, and then put it behind us.”
“Uh-oh. I'm in trouble again, aren't I? Back in the doghouse.”
She didn't return my smile, but she did take my hand in both of hers.
“I thank God for you every single day of my life, Alex, and I thank him for letting me raise you, and see you turn into the man you did. But I want you to think about why you came to me in the first place, what was going on between your poor parents before they died. Simply put, Jannie and Damon and Ali deserve better than you had.”
Nana stopped to make room for what was coming next. “Don't make them orphans, Alex.”
Mary, Mary
Chapter 120
I STARTED TO SPEAK my piece, but Nana Mama went on, gently raising her voice.
“I'm the first of us to go. Don't you dare argue with me.”
Finally, I just shrugged, which hurt my shoulder and neck.
“What can I say?”
“Nothing. You say nothing. You just listen to my wisdom, wisdom of the ages. You listen, and maybe one day you'll finally learn something.”
We shared a long look into each other's eyes. A lump rose in my throat, although what I felt wasn't sadness. It was more like gratitude, and the most incredible love for this small, amazingly powerful woman - who was, indeed, wise beyond her years, and certainly mine.
“Believe it or not, I always listen to you,” I said.
“Yes, and then you go and do whatever you were going to do in the first place.”
Sounds from the hospital corridor came into the room as the door opened halfway I looked over to see Damon's eager face, and my heart did a little hop.
“Look who it is ”I wiped my eyes. “The man of the house has arrived.”
“They told us Jannie can't come in 'cause she's under twelve,” he said.
I sat up in bed. “Where is she?”
“I'm right here.” Jannie's indignant tone came through clearly from behind the door.
"Well, then get in here before anyone sees you. C'mon. Nobody's gonna arrest you.
Except me, if you stay outside for one minute longer."
The two of them came in and rushed over to the bed, stopping short at the sight of my collection of bandages. I reached out with my free arm and took them both in at the same time.
“How long do you have to be here?” Jannie asked into my good side.
“Should be going home in a couple of days,” I told her.
“Looks worse than it is,” said Nana.
Damon stood up again and looked at the truss. “Did it hurt really bad?”
“Badly,” Nana muttered.
“I've had worse,” I said. They both looked at me with the same neutral, almost reproachful expression. "Who was the parent here, anyway? Somehow they seemed older than the last time I'd seen them. I felt a little older myself. These two were going to grow and change, whether or not I was around to watch. Such an obvious thing, but the truth of it - the reality of it - suddenly inhabited me.
I finally gave in. “Yeah,” I said. “It did. It hurt a lot.”
And then, that terrible thought again - don't make them orphans, Alex - and I held my kids so tight, even as my shoulder ached, but I couldn't let them go, and I couldn't let them know what I was thinking, either.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 121
I STAYED AT THE FLETCHER ALLEN HOSPITAL in Vermont for nearly a week, which was my longest hospital stay to date, and maybe another warning to me. How many warnings did I get?
Around 6:00 in the evening on Friday, I received a call from Detective Jeanne Galletta out in L.A. “Alex, has anyone told you the news yet?” she asked. “I assume they have.”
“What news, Jeanne? That I'm being released from the hospital tomorrow?”
“I don't know anything about that. But yesterday, Mary Wagner confessed to the murders here in L.A.”
“She didn't commit those murders. Michael Bell did.”
"I know that. Even Maddux Fielding knows it. Nobody believed her, but she confessed.
Then, sometime last night, poor Mary Wagner hung herself in her cell. She's dead, Alex.“ I sighed and shook my head a couple of times. ”I'm really sorry to hear that. It's just another death Bell is responsible for. Another murder."
The following morning, and much to my surprise, I was released from the hospital. I called home with the news, and I even managed to get on a flight to Boston. From Boston I caught the hourly shuttle to D.C. Never been so happy to get on a crowded commuter plane in my life.
It was easiest to get a cab at the airport, and as I rode into Southeast around 7:00 that night, I felt a soft, warm glow spreading inside my body There's no place like home, there's no place like home. I know that isn't true for everybody, but it is for me, and I also know how lucky it makes me.